The opioid crisis has become a major issue across the United States including right here in our area. On average, 115 Americans lose their life daily at the hand of opioids.
More than 63,600 lives were lost to drug overdose in 2016, the most lethal year yet of the drug overdose epidemic. Opioids now kill more people than breast cancer, the same 2016 report from the CDC shows that 42,249 of the fatalities involved opioids, that its 66 percent of all drug fatalities.
In the year 2016, 1,405 Virginians lost their lives in this epidemic. Our Congressman Morgan Griffith fights hard to combat this epidemic every day he is in Washington.
Congressman Griffith has sponsored and cosponsored many of pieces of legislation on this issue and is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over some of the most important issues facing Virginia’s Ninth District including public health and federal regulations.
On many occasions he has highlighted ways that opioids make their way into Southwest Virginia, one of the biggest is called “Pill dropping.”
A prime example of this practice occurred close to us in southern West Virginia, where two pharmacies in the town of Williamson, population 3,000, received 20.8 million pain pills over ten years.
It’s hard to imagine pills from Williamson did not make the journey into southwest Virginia. It is critical that we keep Congressman Griffith fighting for us on this issue and many others!
Jake Petzold,
Montgomery County
