With the possibility of a U.S. attack on Syria still in limbo, a new poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center and USA Today suggests an overwhelming majority of Americans stand in opposition. A group sharing the same sentiment came together for a vigil in Charleston Monday night with hopes that Congress will hear their message.
West Virginia Citizen Action Group and West Virginia Patriots for Peace organized the vigil along Kanawha Boulevard in front of Haddad Riverfront Park. Members of the groups and other concerned citizens held signs saying “No Boots, No Bombs, No Way” and others urging passersby to call their representatives in Congress and speak out against possible military force.
Executive Director for West Virginia Citizen Action Group Gary Zuckett said he cares about the people caught in Syria’s civil war but he believes military action might only make matters worse.
“We feel bombing [Syria] is not the road to peace and that we really need to have an international solution and an international community working on a solution to that—hopefully a peaceful solution,” said Zuckett.
“Going in there right now and bombing Assad’s equipment is not going to stop the killing and may very well escalate the conflict out of that country and into the whole region,” he argued.
Zuckett said the Charleston vigil was one of countless events Monday around the state and country showing opposition to U.S. military action in Syria.
Despite growing national sentiment against U.S. military involvement in Syria, other groups in the area have recently called on President Obama to strike. Members of the West Virginia chapter of the Syrian American Council and others gathered at the state Capitol on Wednesday, August 28 to rally in support of the use of U.S. military force.
With a vote expected in Congress next week, Senator Joe Manchin says he will not support a U.S. military strike over alleged chemical weapons attacks by…
With a vote expected in Congress next week, Senator Joe Manchin says he will not support a U.S. military strike over alleged chemical weapons attacks by President BasharAl-Assad on the people of Syria.
In a news release, Manchin said he has attended hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which he is a member, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committees, of which he is not. He said he has also attended classified briefings with the Obama Administration and has met with national security and foreign policy experts with hopes to seek more information on a potential attack on Syria.
“The decision to use U.S. military force is one of the most serious decisions I have ever made,” said Manchin in the release.
Manchin said he cannot support the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution passed on Wednesday that calls for a “limited and tailored” strike. That resolution would limit a strike to 60 days with an option to be extended another 30 days after a consultation with Congress. It would also block the use of U.S. troops on the ground.
Despite these limitations, Manchin said he does not support a strike on Syria.
“In good conscience, I cannot support the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution and will be working with my colleagues and the administration to develop other options,” he said.
Manchin said he believes the U.S. should exhaust all diplomatic options and have a comprehensive plan for international involvement before a strike occurs.
With coal industry jobs dwindling and many young people leaving the state to find work, speakers at the Bright Economic Future for the Mountain State Conference in Charleston outlined many of the challenges for the state’s economy. Even despite these obstacles, many entrepreneurs, policy experts and grassroots organizations who gathered at the conference said they see plenty of opportunity.
“What I’m learning is that people really, really are interested in having this conversation about what our future looks like. I think that people—I think we see really strong support for the idea of diversifying our economy,” said Jeremy Richardson, a Fellow with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Although his organization usually focuses on issues related to climate change and renewable energy, Richardson noticed the need to apply those issues to the state’s economy and helped organize the Bright Economic Future Conference.
West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy Executive Director Ted Boettner says a diverse, healthy economy ultimately comes down to a healthy and financially stable workforce. But, he said, the state has struggled with that in recent decades.
Credit West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy
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The graph shows the average wages for West Virginia workers from 1969 to 2011.
“Back in the late ‘70s there was a time when middle-class families were fairing pretty well. Our wages were a little higher, more people had benefits, you could raise a family on one income. Those times have dramatically changed,” Boettner said.
“Now you need both people in the workforce, you’re making less, and you’re working more hours. At the same time you are unable to afford some pretty basic expenses like healthcare.”
During a panel focused on the potential of moving the economy forward, Kent Spellman of the West Virginia Community Development Hub noted that his organization believes that working directly with people in small communities is the key to improving the economic picture.
“We really believe, frankly, that economic transition—this is a great group of people—but, for it to work, we have to get out in our communities and we have to listen. The Hub and the work we do with smaller, rural communities—and we mostly work with smaller, rural communities—focuses on wealth creation, not job creation. We want to see communities create opportunities—economic opportunities—that are locally based, that are placed based, that keep the wealth in the community,” Spellman said.
Both Richardson and Boettner echoed Spellman’s call for a grassroots-oriented, localized push for the diversification of the state’s economy. Richardson said that means it’s up to each community to play a part in deciding how they can contribute to the state’s economic future.
“I think it depends on where you are. We were just listening to one of the commissioners of Fayette County who was talking about all of the wonderful opportunities they have taken advantage of there,” he said.
Richardson also pointed to business projects in unlikely places, such as Sustainable Williamson in Mingo County—right in the heart of an area known as the Billion Dollar Coalfield.
“I think it depends on your location to some extent. The message that I’m trying to get out there is that we need to expand peoples’ idea of what’s even possible,” he explained.
Other presentations at the conference included Richardson’s discussion of sustainable economic development, a lecture from Boettner on the proposed state Future Fund, and a screening and discussion of the interactive film Hollow, directed by McDowell County native filmmaker Elaine McMillion.
West Virginia, its culture and people are in a state of superposition, says writer poet and Kanawha Valley native Crystal Good.
Charged by her Affrilachian poet peers to combine her thoughts and observations of West Virginia with principles of Quantum Physics, Good delivered a lecture at a TedxTalks event in Lewisburg in July.
In an attempt to understand the state’s people, culture and history (and future), Good examines our complex nature:
"West Virginia, for example, is the Southern-most Northern-est and the Northern-most Southern-est state in the Eastern Time Zone. West Virginia isn't really even west of Virginia but kind of up and over. West Virginia was both Union and Confederate in the Civil War. Today, West Virginia is a democratic state that votes Republican. And West Virginia is a state sitting at the crossroads, teaming with billboards that read 'Coal Keeps the Lights On', yet we're one of the poorest states in the nation."
It’s through those dichotomies and the example of Schrödinger’s Cat, where Good argues that West Virginia can be viewed through the lens of Quantum Physics.
You can listen to Good’s interview with West Virginia Public Radio Broadcasting at the top of the page or stream a video of her TEDxTalk here:
A West Virginia-based pharmacy chain is hoping to combat the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine by stocking a tamper-resistant form of the drug used…
A West Virginia-based pharmacy chain is hoping to combat the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine by stocking a tamper-resistant form of the drug used in its production.
Fruth Pharmacy, which has 27 locations in West Virginia and Ohio, announced it will begin stocking a drug called Nexafed. The tablet contains the active ingredient pseudoephedrine, similar to the popular brand-name allergy drug Sudafed.
But if an abuser tries to extract the pseudoephedrine out of Nexafed to make meth, it breaks down into a thick gel that thwarts production. That’s all thanks to a technology developed by Illinois-based Acura Pharmaceuticals.
Vice President of Marketing for Acura Brad Rivet said the product, which has been on the market since last December, is comparable to similar, more familiar drugs you may already have in your medicine cabinet.
“We’ve done a comparative study with the branded pseudoephedrine product to show that, in humans, the rate and extent of absorption in the bloodstream is virtually identical. So, the efficacy that people have come to expect with older drugs that don’t have this technology will be there for them with Nexafed,” said Rivet.
Fruth pharmacies will continue to stock other pseudoephedrine products that offer different dosages from Nexafed. The company plans to replace traditional pseudoephedrine products with the new drug as more dosages become available.
Lynne Fruth, president of the company that bears her name, admits the pharmacy may take a hit to its bottom line because of brand loyalty and those still managing to use pseudoephedrine for illicit purposes. However, she says it’s important the company plays a role in protecting the community.
“If they’re looking for the purposes of meth, they aren’t interested in buying this product. We’re having pharmacists tell us that when they say, ‘We don’t carry straight Sudafed except in the Nexafed’ then some people say ‘Well, I don’t want that stuff.’ Which, that tells us that’s probably not a legitimate purchaser of the drug,” said Fruth, who also chairs the board of her Point Pleasant-based company.
Lawmakers and policy makers try to address the growing problem in West Virginia
In West Virginia, 288 meth labs were seized last year. So far in 2013, authorities have seized over 300 meth labs, most of which were discovered in Kanawha County. In mid-May, The Charleston Gazette reported state police estimated that meth lab seizures for 2013 were on pace to double last year’s numbers.
Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito attended Fruth’s Nexafed roll-out announcement at the Lee Street location in Charleston. She suggested legislation that might curb meth production by requiring a prescription to purchase pseudoephedrine could be considered at the state level.
Credit Dave Mistich / State of WV
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State of WV
Lee Street Fruth Pharmacist Sam Arco explains the new product Nexafed as Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and Lynne Fruth, president of the company, look on. The product contains pseudoephedrine but cannot be used in the manufacturing of methamphetamine.
“I think that’s something that’s been considered in the state and I think that’s something that, if the problem continues without a solution—or attempted solutions like the ones we’re seeing—I think that’s probably something that would be considered,” said Capito regarding a prescription requirement for the drug.
Currently only two states, Oregon and Mississippi, require a prescription for the purchase of products containing pseudoephedrine. In an op-ed from 2010 published in The New York Times, one law enforcement official from Oregon has said that tactic is translating to fewer meth lab busts.
Recent legislation passed in West Virginia keeps all products with pseudoephedrine behind the counter and puts a cap on the amount allowed to be purchased or posessed. Sales of the drug are tracked and customers must also show identification for purchase, yet Lee Street Fruth Pharmacist Sam Arco noted that meth manufacturers often outsource the purchase of pseudoephedrine to others known as “smurfs.”
“The monitoring method doesn’t really take care of everything because I can buy a box, Congresswoman Capito can buy a box and Lynne can buy a box. All of the sudden we have three boxes out there. We don’t know where it’s going. You just don’t know that all of the time,” Arco explained, hypothetically.
Even despite the use of the National Precursor Log Exchange tracking system, known as NPLEx, West Virginians are still purchasing traditional, potentially meth-yielding pseudoephedrine products at a rapid pace. About 40,000 boxes per month of the sinus medication have been sold so far this year, according to data from the state pharmacy board.
Such high sales and skyrocketing lab busts brought Del. Don Purdue (D-Wayne) to ask Attorney General Patrick Morrisey to investigate manufacturers of pseudoephedrine. The Beckley Register-Herald recently reported that Purdue intends to revisit a bill that would require a prescription for the drug.
Are smaller, independent pharmacies the key to curbing meth production?
Fruth said past the monitoring system and any legislation on the books, the ultimate decision lies in the hands of those working behind the counter.
“It is totally at the pharmacist’s professional discretion to decide if they’re going to sell pseudoephedrine. One of the things as a local family-owned company, you tend to know your customers and a lot of our pharmacists will often opt if it is somebody from out of state or a customer who is not known to them,” said Fruth.
Rivet said Acura has intentionally targeted smaller pharmacies around the country like Fruth because of their heightened ability to influence consumers.
“We started with independent pharmacies because the pharmacist at that level is obviously aware of the need in his community and they see the need for a product like Nexafed,” said Rivet.
“Because they’re their own decision makers, they can immediately choose to put Nexafed in and start stocking it and recommending it, unlike a chain pharmacist who sees the same needs—they have to get headquarter approval before a product is brought in. So, we started with the independent pharmacies, especially those in those high meth-awareness states.”
Rivet said Nexafed is currently available in over 1,400 pharmacies nationwide.
Photographs depicting life in West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia have long been the subject of controversy. One documentary photographer with roots in the state’s southern coal fields is seeking to change that through his work but also has motives far more personal.
“The pictures have this visual context of Appalachia, or at least the mountains. Even if you don’t even know what Appalachia is, you can see this rural, country, mountain way of life,” said documentary photographer Roger May as he spoke about his project Testify.
He affectionately refers to the project as a “visual love letter to Appalachia.”
Credit Roger May
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“What you can’t see but you need some sort of back story is my looking for something to sort of hold onto from my childhood and something to sort of carry with me and identify these things that are often not exactly how we remember them,” he said.
Born across the river in Pike County, Kentucky and raised in Chattaroy in Mingo County, May has lived in Raleigh, North Carolina since the late ‘80s. He recalled his formative years in the southern West Virginia coal fields and his mother’s reasons for relocating the family to North Carolina.
“I was becoming more aware that we were poor and we were on welfare. And my mom, as a single mom of two boys, she didn’t want our only option to be to work in the coal mines. She felt like if we stayed, and if I stayed through high school, that’s pretty much what was going to happen,” said May.
Although he’s returned to the area often to visit family, just over six years ago May began what he calls “making photographs” of the people and the area he still calls home.
Credit Roger May
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“I try to be very deliberate when I say ‘I’m making pictures’ or ‘making photographs’ rather than ‘taking’ because, that one letter, so much hinges on that. These people have been taken—they’ve had enough taken from them already—I don’t want to be another taker in a long line of takers,” he said.
Initially compiling a body of work that protested mountaintop mining, May’s focus eventually turned into a reflection on his childhood and upbringing in the Tug Fork Valley.
The photographs from Testify document the spectrum of scenery in the state’s southern coalfields, from landscapes of the mountains to mining facilities—even the people May calls his own.
At its core, Testify, serves to champion the place where May is from, but also attempts to reconcile his memories of growing up with the reality of life in the area.
Credit Roger May
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“This project has just been a creative process to kind of work that out. I say ‘memory versus reality’ and memory is a real thing and reality is a real thing. Those don’t always line up. Somewhere in the middle is probably a more accurate reflection of what actually happened,” he said.
May’s limited edition collection of photos will be published by Horse & Buggy Press. It is scheduled for release in September and was entirely funded by a Kickstarter campaign he launched earlier this year.
