Officials discuss national and local efforts to address the overdose epidemic

MORGANTOWN, W.Va (WDTV) - Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Dr. Rahul Gupta visited WVU to discuss the drug epidemic.

He was joined by WVU President Gordon Gee and Clay Marsh Chancellor and Executive Dean for Health Sciences.

According to reports, West Virginia had over 1,500 deaths due to overdoses in 2021.

Dr. Gupta said we need to have resources readily available for people, and according to him, the first step is to adopt and embrace harm reduction strategies.

“That includes naloxone. That includes programs, it also includes drug checking. That includes the fentanyl test strips, and xylazine test strips that we’re looking at for resources. Again, there’s a half a billion dollars proposed for harm reduction programs in the president’s budget.”

Dr. Gupta said people need to educate themselves and talk with each other to break the stigma surrounding this epidemic.

President Gee said the Gen Z generation is much different than the older generation who are less open about talking about addiction.

“They are not as afraid to talk about these issues. In fact, in many ways they’re very open about that. In many ways, they’re a healthier generation from the point of view of dealing with public health problems.”

Dr. Gupta said every doctor needs to be screening for addiction to help break the stigma in the healthcare profession.

Dr. Marsh said WVU has been actively expanding their services to help people recover from addiction.

“So, we are now able to move people to treatment. We have an addiction medicine program, addiction psychiatry program. We use teleconferencing to be able to educate. Something called Tela echo, which is about spreading the knowledge from specialists to generalist so that we can provide more providers.”

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