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During the same era in which one federal agency was targeting the citizens of Appalachia who depend on the coal industry both for employment and for affordable electricity, another agency was turning a blind eye -- ignoring its own rules and regulations -- to allow pharmaceutical companies to victimize us with opioid painkiller drugs.
During a 10-month span, McKesson Corp. dumped 3 million pills into the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in Kermit. They knew what they were doing. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration knew they were doing it.
According to a report released by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen, and their regional distributors, were largely responsible for the flood of opioids into the Mountain State and other vulnerable regions. And at best, the DEA was not proactive in reviewing usage data to combat the diversion of drugs for illicit purposes. The report suggests there are troubling questions about the DEA's enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act.
Now, West Virginia has the highest death rate from prescription drug overdoses in the country. Many see the Mountain State as the poster child for explanation of the declining national average life expectancy. Referring to West Virginia as "the canary in the coal mine," Dr. Michael Brumage, a West Virginia University public health expert, pointed out life expectancy started falling here well before it did anywhere else.
Certainly obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer are among the culprits, but another major factor is "deaths of despair."
The drug overdose death rate for the nation as a whole is today what West Virginia's rate was 10 years ago. The nation's suicide rate is where West Virginia's was nearly 20 years ago. We have moved on to much higher rates.
Hopelessness borne of crippling poverty and an unemployment rate that remains defiant of the progress the rest of the nation is experiencing combine with the darkness of the cycle of addiction.
Though the evidence has been in front of them for years, Congress now has a report that helps them understand why. Surely they can see how West Virginians got the feeling the folks in the swamp are not interested in our well-being.
It is long past time for the federal government to do more about the crisis it ignored for so long.