Although major resources have been invested in combating the drug crisis, the results are dismal, analysts say.

Drug addiction remains a widespread and deadly problem in West Virginia, state lawmakers learned in a presentation full of alarming and frightening statistics.

“I'm not going to sweep this under the rug. The bottom line is that we have not made enough progress in this crisis. We are nowhere near where we should be, and our data on other states and even our own expectations have fallen far short of expectations,” Jeremiah Samples, senior policy adviser to the West Virginia Legislature, told members of the Joint Standing Committee on Health.

His presentation Monday afternoon was grim but not without hope. Samples recommended a reassessment of substance abuse disorder policies and spending with a focus on what is actually happening to people in communities.

He also expressed optimism about the new West Virginia First Foundation, the nonprofit with access to millions of dollars in drug settlement funds that can be used for recovery. And he pointed to the work of the state's Office of Drug Control Policy, which was created in 2017 and now has a budget of $2.3 million a year.

But Samples, a former deputy director of the state's Health and Human Services Department, also pointed to the billions of dollars already spent on reducing drug problems, and yet “we have had the highest number of overdose deaths in the country since 2010 and every year since. In fact, we have seen an exponential increase in that rate since that time.”

His presentation was full of stunning statistics:

— An estimated 208,000 people in West Virginia used illegal drugs in the last month, according to a survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

– Overall, the age-adjusted number of drug overdose deaths in the United States quadrupled from 2002 to 2022.

– In 2022, there were 107,941 drug overdose deaths.

— In West Virginia, there were 1,335 known overdose deaths in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

– From 1999 to 2022, overdose deaths in West Virginia increased by 1,680%.

“We as a society cannot sustain this,” said Samples. “It paralyzes the state.”

According to Samples, West Virginia's overdose death rate is 151% higher than the best state in the country, 85.6% higher than the national average, and 36.4% higher than the next worst state.

“It's hard to stay positive when you compare yourself to other countries like this and see that you're falling further and further behind,” he said.

He said the impact now spanned multiple generations and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in indirect costs in child protection alone.

West Virginia leads the nation in neonatal abstinence syndrome, which occurs when a baby experiences withdrawal symptoms from drug use before birth in the womb, he said, and the state leads the nation in drug use in the womb. Only about 17,000 babies are born in West Virginia each year.

“And of those 17,000 births, about 2,500 babies are exposed to drugs in the womb each year. So if you extrapolate that out over a decade or more, you see the demographic tsunami that's coming our way,” Samples said. “It's a crisis.”

Samples noted that lawmakers have already passed a number of measures to address many of these problems, but he said more could be passed, including some he recommended.

“But that really doesn't matter because the most important thing I think we need to do is measure what matters so that we can then pivot and organically improve our response to this crisis,” Samples said.

“We need to measure every aspect of our drug abuse policy and spending and link it to a central societal metric.”

He proposed measuring the number of overdose deaths, substance exposure in the womb, the rate of spread of infectious diseases, and the mortality or near-fatality rate of drugs in children.

“These are the things that really matter to people.”

He added: “Why am I even here today? It's not because of a procedural problem. It's because people are fed up with what's happening in their communities. They're fed up with their loved ones dying. They're fed up with the people they know suffering year after year. We need to start measuring ourselves and setting goals and sticking to those goals. And when we miss those goals, we need to explain why.”

The legislative committee also heard testimony from Jonathan Board, executive director of the West Virginia First Foundation, which provides more than $225 million to alleviate the effects of drug addiction.

“We know we can't just check boxes here and there,” Board told lawmakers. “In many ways, we walk through cemeteries every day and we know that every single dollar we have is in thanks to a loved one who has been lost or terribly affected by this health crisis.”

The Committee also heard from the new Executive Director of the Office of Drug Control Policy, Dr. Stephen Loyd, who appeared on his first day of work.

“West Virginia was ground zero of the opioid crisis. This is where it started and this is where it continues to this day,” Loyd said. “And there were a lot of really great people in this state who worked hard, and for many reasons we are where we are now.”

“I think it would be great if West Virginia showed the rest of the country how to get out of this crisis.”