WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will take steps to improve doctor training and ease access to drug treatment as part of an effort to help communities battling the scourge of heroin and prescription painkiller abuse.
A White House official says Obama will detail the moves Wednesday on a day trip to Charleston, West Virginia. Obama is due to meet with law enforcement officials, drug counselors and advocates at a community center.
West Virginia has the highest rate of overdose deaths in the U.S. — more than twice the national average. That’s according to a report by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Nationally, the number of people who reported using heroin within the past year almost doubled from 2002 to 2013.
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You go Mr.President.
Any positive move is a good move but I really don’t think State and national leadership has any real grasp of the extent of the Afghan heroin scourge on rich, middle class and poor and everyone in between.
Just try to hire for a semi-skilled or unskilled minimum wage position…and, if you’re lucky enough to hire someone, will they show for work or show up sober? Kroger, this weekend, stuffed ‘We’re hiring!’ notices into our grocery bags. I don’t ever recall this happening before. Maybe other states have different, more positive experiences but here in Northern KY and SW OH heroin is making the AIDS epidemic look like a walk in the park.
Very, very true. It’s really bad up there. I have a close friend from Brown County, OH, and the death toll just keeps climbing, not to mention those whose lives are being destroyed. It seems the crackdown on Rx pain pills and systems like KASPAR have only exacerbated the problem.
Heroin possession is much more frequent in the drug busts in this neck of the woods. When the articles list the number of packets seized and their estimated street value, I’m stunned at how cheap heroin is, about $14 a packet! Is this price artificially low to hook a wider clientele now, and then raise prices when they’re addicted?
And America’s heroin addiction indirectly funds the Taliban with $ millions, while the US spends $ billions to fight the Taliban and prop up the Afghan government. The thousands of killed and many more thousands of ruined lives are just collateral costs of doing business. One might say that heroin is radical Islamists best weapon against their Western enemys; heroin addiction is stealthier, deadlier and more lucrative than 9.11!