The city of Huntington, West Virginia, lies at the epicenter of America's opioid epidemic. First responders, business owners, and even newborn babies are succumbing to the growing addiction problem.
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America's Opioid Epidemic is a Public Health Emergency
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It's 10:30 am and a woman lies unconscious and turning blue on a Huntington sidewalk. For the Huntington Fire Department it's just routine. Call-outs for overdoses have climbed year on year to an anticipated high of 5,500. "The level of addiction is beyond anyone's comprehension. I have never known anything that was so all-consuming", says Mayor Steve Williams. "It is affecting everybody in this community." Once thriving businesses and neighborhoods lie abandoned, while newborns suffer withdrawal symptoms, and foster care rises. Once heavily dependent on manual labour work in mining and manufacturing, West Virginia's workforce was prone to injury and chronic pain. A group of painkillers emerged in the mid-90s marketed at this ripe market. Journalist Eric Eyre, of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, uncovered the extent of the pharmaceutical push between 2007 and 2012. "There had been 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone doses shipped to West Virginia over those six years. That comes to roughly 430 pills per person", he says. Now following a crackdown on the pills, the city steels itself for a long-term battle against the availability of illegal drugs.
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