AG: Nonprofit Should Help Manage Opioid Settlement Money

West Virginia’s attorney general and a coalition of cities and counties are calling for the creation of a nonprofit foundation to distribute money obtained through settlements or judgments in opioid-related litigation against pharmaceutical companies.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said all but one of the state’s 55 counties are currently in the midst of litigation against companies over their role in perpetuating the opioid crisis. Lawsuits allege that manufacturers’ conduct led to opioids becoming a common treatment for chronic pain and fueled substance abuse in West Virginia, one of the states that has been hit hardest by opioids.

The city of Huntington and Cabell County brought the three largest U.S. drug distributors — AmerisourceBergen Corp, McKesson Corp and Cardinal Health Inc — to trial last year. Communities are still awaiting a verdict in that case, which was the first lawsuit over the U.S. addiction epidemic to go to trial.

The state is set to go to trial in April against Teva Pharmaceuticals Inc., Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Endo Health Solutions Inc.

“The opioid epidemic is one of the challenges of our time here in West Virginia,” Morrisey said during a Wednesday press conference at the state Capitol. “There’s been a lot of senseless death over many, many years.”

Morrisey said the state’s counties and cities signed on to an agreement calling for the private nonprofit foundation. The foundation will be managed by a board of 11 members: Five would be state appointees and the rest would be local representatives from six different regions of the state. The board members will have expertise in fields like mental health, substance misuse and law enforcement.

An executive director appointed by the attorney general would run day-to-day operations.

As the central organization dedicated to addressing the opioid crisis throughout the state, the foundation would receive 72.5% of each settlement or judgment, 24.5% would be allocated to local governments and 3% would held in escrow by the state.

Many other states already have similar agreements and others have been pushing them. Morrisey said if the counties and the cities of the state don’t reach an agreement on how the money will be allocated, the court gets to decide.

All of the money would be used to address needs related to the opioid crisis.

Huntington Mayor Steve Williams said Wednesday that any money won in litigation will go to new initiatives and program to help fight the opioid epidemic.

“One thing that’s been very, very specific in our minds is that we’re not looking to be reimbursed for what we have expended in the past,” he said.

Williams said there’s a lot of need — need that’s only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is such a broad umbrella,” he said. “You have grandparents who are having to take care of grandchildren. You have children growing up in the midst of adverse childhood experiences that we need to be able to address,” he said. “What we’re seeing is that we have babies that are being born exposed to substances… it is the entire community that’s being affected.”

Game Changers Program Will Start At 3 Harrison County Schools This Fall

Gov. Jim Justice introduced the Game Changers initiative in 2018 with the goal of preventing kids from trying drugs and developing substance use disorders.

This fall, that program will enter schools, Justice announced Tuesday.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am today to make this announcement of the first Game Changers Schools,” Justice said at a press conference.

The program will place full-time Game Changers counselors in three Harrison County schools for the entire year starting in the fall of 2022. Those schools are Lincoln High School, Lincoln Middle School and Big Elm Elementary School.

“We are very excited about it being student-led, students sharing their experiences, and hopefully it leading them to want to change their lives,” said Lincoln Middle School Principal Lori Scott.

Scott said while most of her middle-schoolers aren’t using drugs, she’s seen that many come from unstable homes that could make them more susceptible to substance use disorders down the road.

“We see they’re products of their environment. They’re 12, 13 years old raising themselves, raising siblings, because they’re being neglected at home,” Scott said.

Each Game Changers counselor will teach age-based programming to elementary, middle and high school students. That will include in-class, after school and one-on-one guidance.

Game Changers Executive Director Joe Boczek said these counselors will also enlist students to take on peer leadership roles.

“It’s been proven that kids are more, nowadays, likely to go to a peer with a problem with issues at home, which could be opioid use,” Boczek said. “They feel more comfortable than going down to the counselor.”

Each counselor will be trained by the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, a partner of the program. Boczek said these counselors will bring expertise that other school staff might not have.

“Guidance counselors are frustrated because they don’t know what to do…There’s no plan of attack,” Boczek said.

The goal is to eventually bring the Game Changers program to all schools in the state by 2027. Boczek estimates that expanding the program would cost $20 million a year.

There’s been a lot of fundraising and promotion of the initiative since it was announced in 2018. Game Changers gained financial support from corporate and private donors as well as public backing from leaders like U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin. So far, that’s resulted in large-scale summits that brought kids and experts in drug prevention to one place.

The school’s program will be more intimate and long term. Boczek said it will be a work in progress.

“Studies that will be done after the first year to evaluate the program… they may find some things that we think are going to be really good may not be as successful, and we’ll have to adapt like you have to adapt with anything else,” Boczek said.

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

One By One, Local Leaders Give Blessing To Harm Reduction Programs

Under a new state law, needle exchange programs must now get local buy-in from county and city leaders. Without it, these programs can’t legally operate.

One by one, local elected officials are signing off in support of their local harm reduction programs.

This month, West Virginia’s three largest communities weighed in. Morgantown City Council signed a letter in unanimous support of the Milan Puskar Health Right. The Kanawha County Commission did the same thing for Charleston’s Health Right and Covenant House. Huntington City Council signed a resolution this week in a 7-3 vote.

“It’s a no brainer,” Huntington Mayor Steve Williams told council members. “We need to support this program, because we’re in the middle of the war still and we cannot take our arsenal away from those that are on the front lines.”

Syringe service programs in smaller towns are getting the same response. Programs in Lewis and Fayette counties have already submitted their license applications to the state’s Office of Health Facility Licensure and Certification.

Mingo County Health Department Director Keith Blankenship had to go the extra mile to garner community support. Since Mingo County is such a rural part of the state, Blankenship had to get five towns to sign off on the new program along with the county, which voted in favor unanimously.

“Everyone of them has basically said … ‘What we’re doing is not working right now. So why not try something different?” said Blankenship.

Senate Bill 334

State lawmakers passed SB 334 this year. It’s the first law to regulate syringe service programs in West Virginia.

Any operator that hands out clean needles must meet certain guidelines and apply for a state license. Health departments and clinics are used to wading through red tape, said Dr. Michael Kilkenny, the the CEO of the Cabell Huntington Health Department. It began a harm reduction program in 2015.

“Licensure is a modest bureaucratic barrier …we’ve done harder things than to get licensed for syringe service,” Kilkenny said.

At least two programs, in Mercer and Marion Counties, have shut down due to the new stipulations.

The law also requires local political officials to sign off on these programs. Harm reduction is supported by evidence that shows offering clean needles curbs the spread of HIV. It also builds a relationship between health providers and people actively using illegal drugs, leading more people to eventually enter treatment. Still, it can be controversial.

“I think some of the distrust out there was driving this law,” Kilkenny said.

SB 334 doesn’t ban needle exchange programs altogether. Proponents of the bill said it would weed out bad operators.

Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper didn’t write or vote on the state law, but now he’s an essential voice in whether a syringe service program can operate in the state’s largest county.

“I know this much, people in my county did not appreciate it when folks were passing out needles with no program,” Carper said.

Carper said he is a “longtime supporter” of a true comprehensive harm reduction program, and he would never sign off on anything that doesn’t meet his definition of that. He did voice his support for Health Right’s program, which has been around for 10 years.

“I’ve got absolute confidence in Health Right,” Carper said.

Standard Versus Best Practices 

Health Right CEO Dr. Angie Settle has been holding public hearings on her program to meet both state and city requirements. Charleston passed its own regulations on syringe service programs right when state lawmakers were considering SB 334.

She spoke to a small group of mostly Charleston City Council members at a community center gym a block away from her East End clinic this month.

No one questioned if her program was enabling people to use drugs or creating more needle litter in the streets. (These are the types of concerns echoed by lawmakers surrounding SB 334).

Instead, two women chimed in to ask if Settle’s program was reaching enough people.

Settle said Health Right serves about 400 harm reduction participants a month, though not all need syringes. A third eventually go into treatment, and the clinic’s never had trouble getting help for someone that’s willing.

The program requires participants to return their needles to get new ones, called a 1:1 model.

“As long as they bring them back, we don’t limit the number they can have,” she said.

State law requires programs adhere to this model, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it’s less effective than giving people syringes regardless if they return them.

“This law actually holds us back from moving towards best practices,” said Kilkenny. Instead, programs must settle on following “standard” practices.

It also requires participants to show a state I.D., again limiting who can access syringes.

“It is not best practice. But it is viable in our current community political environment,” Kilkenny said.

Even before SB 334, these programs have been at odds with the public’s favor at times. The programs that are still around, like Kilkenny’s and Settle’s, have been able to walk a tightrope of providing evidence-based services with some restrictions that ease the minds of political and community leaders.

“We will follow state and city ordinances to the letter of the law,” Settle said. “You have to be able to live within your community.”

A Brand New Program

SB 334 has frustrated program operators, causing some to quit entirely. But for some communities, it’s been a chance to build a brand new service.

“I really started getting very interested in maybe becoming a member of that first group to become certified health harm reduction centers,” said Blankenship with Mingo County’s health department.

Mingo County has been hit hard by prescription opioid abuse. One local solution has been a quick response team that engages with people shortly after they’ve overdosed. Blankenship says it usually leads to treatment, and he believes the harm reduction program will hopefully further success rates.

“We’ve got various aspects of the program in the county, but we don’t have that one major umbrella who kind of covers the whole perspective,” Blankenship said.

Not only does he hope to help more people, but he thinks the program will help this community collect data and understand the extent to which people are using IV drugs or are at risk of contracting HIV.

He’s ready to follow state guidelines, and work with the local leaders that signed off on this program in the coming year.

“We’re going to experience speed bumps, but by working together we can solve it instead of just getting frustrated and closing the program down and then everybody loses,” Blankenship said.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

Recovery from addiction is possible. For help, please call the free and confidential treatment referral hotline (1-800-662-HELP) or visit findtreatment.gov.

Drug Overdoses Climbing Year After Year In U.S., W.Va.

Last year set a record for overdose deaths but federal officials forecast 2021 to be even more tragic. In West Virginia, that outlook is even more bleak.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released preliminary data Wednesday that estimates 100,000 people died in just a 12-month span — from March 2020 to March 2021. During those months, 1,600 West Virginians passed away.

That provisional data represents a 29 percent increase in the nation from one year prior. In West Virginia, deaths increased twice that rate at 62 percent. Vermont is the only other state to see a more significant increase at 70 percent.

“This translates to an American perishing from a drug overdose death every five minutes,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, the nation’s recently confirmed drug czar and former West Virginia state health officer in a news conference on Wednesday.

Kanawha Charleston Health Department

Health experts say the pandemic and a rise in the dangerous, synthetic opioid fentanyl caused drug overdoses to peak last year when 93,000 people died. In its latest data set, the CDC says fentanyl was involved in a majority of fatal overdoses.

“The amount of illegal fentanyl in our country has risen to an unprecedented level this year alone,” said Anne Milgram, an administrator with the Drug Enforcement Administration. She said her agency has seized 12,000 pounds of the substance this year, including 14 million fake prescription pills.

Elected officials weighed in on the news today, with grief and calls for action.

“Today’s heartbreaking milestone makes it crystal clear that we have not done enough,” said Sen. Joe Manchin in a statement.

Manchin said he supports more treatment options in the Mountain State and making fentanyl a Schedule I controlled substance permanently.

The Biden administration spoke with reporters today to tout how it plans to tackle the ever-increasing drug crisis. The president is calling for a $670 million increase in next year’s budget for research, prevention and treatment.

Biden may be the first president to advocate for harm reduction, which is an evidence-based approach that hopes to keep active drug users as safe as possible before they even enter treatment. For the president, that means more access to fentanyl testing strips, clean syringes and overdose reversal treatments, namely naloxone.

Naloxone can restore a person’s breathing and consciousness, preventing death and potential brain damage. EMS can administer this medication, but so can friends or bystanders.

Federal officials released a model law Wednesday that states could adopt to provide more access to naloxone. It recommends ways to make the life-saving medication affordable and accessible, such as handing it out in correctional and educational settings.

While convincing state legislatures, especially Republican-led ones like West Virginia, to adopt a Biden backed bill might be a hurdle, those in addiction services say the suggestions are good ones.

“These are things that we could already be doing in West Virginia under current law,” said Robin Pollini, a substance abuse and infectious disease epidemiologist at West Virginia University. “Physicians can legally prescribe naloxone anytime they like, and pharmacists can co-dispense naloxone… Yet this is rarely done.”

Pollini said one of the best things the federal government could do is make naloxone available over the counter.

Harm reduction programs, grassroots groups and state agencies do distribute naloxone throughout West Virginia, with many doses coming from the state’s Office of Drug Control Policy. The office has distributed over 33,000 naloxone kits so far this year. About 8,000 doses were handed out by volunteers during Save-A-Life Day events this year.

“I’m supportive and the office is supportive of all the initiatives that the Biden administration has proposed around distributing naloxone,” Director of ODCP Dr. Matthew Christiansen said.

He thinks the state is being proactive on this front, and has eliminated some barriers. West Virginia has a good Samaritan law that shields anyone administering naloxone from repercussions if they’re acting in good faith. The state also has a standing order saying a pharmacist can dispense naloxone without a doctor’s prescription.

“We know that it’s effective in reversing overdose, and we know that it enables people to enter into successful long-term recovery in a way that allows them to really be productive members of society,” Christiansen said.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

Former W.Va. Health Official Becomes U.S. Drug Czar

A former West Virginia health official will become part of President Joe Biden’s administration.

Dr. Rahul Gupta was named director of National Drug Control Policy and confirmed for the position by Congress on Thursday. Gupta is the first physician to serve in this role.

“I have seen firsthand the heartbreaking toll of addiction and overdose in our communities, but I have also seen how we can save lives if we understand the individuals behind the statistics and meet them where they are,” said Gupta in a statement from the White House.

Most recently, Gupta worked for the March of Dimes, a national organization promoting healthy outcomes for babies and their mothers.

Before that, he served as the leading health official of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department and the state’s Bureau for Public Health.

West Virginia political and health leaders congratulated the former state resident on his new job, saying he will bring a true understanding of the opioid crisis.

“His work to combat the drug epidemic in a state with the worst overdose rate in the nation, where we lost 1,386 West Virginians to fatal drug-related overdoses last year, makes him well-prepared to lead similar efforts on a national scale,” said Sen. Joe Manchin.

Statements of support also came from state health officer Dr. Ayne Amjad and former Charleston health department officer Dr. Sherri Young.

“I know he will bring a unique and valued perspective on the drug crisis facing this nation, especially rural America,” Young said.

However, Gupta also has critics. National outlets have cited his role in dismissing harm reduction efforts in West Virginia. As the state’s leading health official, he issued a 2018 report that discredited the now defunct Charleston health department’s clean needle exchange.

The Biden administration says harm reduction is key to decreasing record high overdose death rates.

Biden’s Plan For Overdoses? Harm Reduction

The Biden administration announced its plan Wednesday to curb drug overdoses in the nation. Overdose deaths are at their height, with the most deaths ever recorded in 2020 across the U.S. and in West Virginia.

Federal officials announced in Baltimore the latest national Overdose Prevention Plan.

The plan, and priorities set by Biden’s Office of Drug Control Policy, highlight a shift to less punitive and evidence-based measures, said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

“Our new strategy focuses on people — putting the very individuals who have struggled with addiction in positions of power,” Becerra said.

Harm reduction is at the core of Biden’s latest plan. Harm reduction is the practice of keeping those actively using drugs as safe as possible. Advocates say it’s the most compassionate response to the opioid crisis, while some policy makers see it as controversial.

Either way, it works, said Robin Pollini. She is a substance abuse and infectious disease epidemiologist at West Virginia University.

“People often think that [harm reduction] is ‘progressive’. It’s not, it’s science-based. It’s like any other science based intervention that you would undertake,” Pollini said.

Federal officials outlined ways to prevent disease and death of those using drugs. That includes providing more naloxone to reverse overdoses, testing strips to see if a substance is laced with fentanyl (a highly dangerous synthetic opioid), and clean needles to curb the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C.

The Biden administration hopes to allocate $11 billion in drug programming for the next fiscal year. Congress would have to weigh in.

Even if money and support is allocated to harm reduction services, Pollini worries that West Virginia might not meet the call to action. There are programs in the state that distribute clean needles and naloxone, but some have shut down in recent months. Two programs in Mercer and Marion Counties say they cannot keep up with the requirements of a state law passed this year.

“How do we implement [federal measures], when we have an increasingly limited number of syringe services programs whose activities are further restricted,” said Pollini.

Gov. Jim Justice’s administration responded to Biden’s plan.

“West Virginia’s treatment and recovery landscape has been transformed by implementing evidence-based prevention programs, aggressively expanding treatment and recovery programs, and focusing on getting those with substance use disorder back to their families and into the workforce,” said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, Director of the WV Office of Drug Control Policy. “We look forward to working to ensure our state plan priorities mesh seamlessly with our federal partners and neighboring states.”

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Charleston Area Medical Center and Marshall Health.

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