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Drug Abuse is Hurting WV

Communities That Care is a science-based prevention planning process designed to help communities
support the healthy development of youth.

The success of a Communities That Care approach is based on participation of ALL parts of our community.

Communities That Care is endorsed at the Federal level by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration (SAMSHA).

Communities That Care has received State funding to develop a county wide sustance abuse prevention plan
for Kanawha County.

Communities That Care works to reduce problem behaviors in youth including substance abuse, teen pregnancy,
delinquency, school drop out and violence.

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News Articles
Drug Abuse is Really Hurting WV Print E-mail

Thursday July 16, 2009

Earlier this month, Gov. Joe Manchin appeared in Huntington to kick off a statewide crackdown called Operation Eviction. The message to drug dealers: Get out of West Virginia and don't come back. Manchin said state and local authorities will do whatever it takes to rid the state of drug dealers. The governor has even asked Military Affairs and Public Safety Secretary Jim Spears to look into whether it's legal to sentence drug dealers to hard labor as punishment.

The abuse of drugs, both illegal and prescribed, has blighted families, neighborhoods and communities all over West Virginia. It affects virtually every aspect of life - schools, health care, corrections, law enforcement, the justice system, the work force and the state's economic prospects.

A hint of just how much this problem costs West Virginians emerged in the first installment of "The Financial Burden of Substance Abuse in West Virginia," produced by the West Virginia Partnership to Promote Community Well-Being. The first report looked only at the criminal justice system. The partnership will go on to look at the effects substance abuse has on other sectors of society as well. But take a look at how much substance abuse contributed to the cost of the criminal justice system in 2008

  • Corrections - almost $74 million
  • Regional Jail Authority - $51 million
  • Public Defender Program - $19 million
  • Division of Juvenile Justice - $13 million
  • State Police - almost $48 million
  • City police - almost $60 million
  • County sheriffs - almost $33 million
  • Circuit courts - almost $12 million
  • Magistrate courts - almost $14 million
  • Probation office - more than $8 million

The total in 2008, including functions not mentioned above: $332.8 million. If current trends are not changed, the cost of substance abuse to these agencies will approach half a billion dollars by 2017. And that's the cost just in dollars. The cost to lives, and the quality of community life in West Virginia, is more poisonous still. The report urges "urgent attention at preventing drug and alcohol use at all ages."