Claudia Di Lima

Some W.Va. Counties Pay Jail Debt With Opioid Funds, Citing Budget Strains

Wyoming County is one of the state’s most rural. It’s home to about 20,000 residents, but no hospital and zero certified treatment beds, according to the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy. As the nation’s opioid overdose epidemic raged, Wyoming County had a prescription overdose death rate of 54.6 per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014 — the highest in the nation.