Of course, there are times when it’s not only impolite but downright rude to bring up money.
But we need to talk about that $631 billion the opioid crisis cost the U.S. economy from 2015 through last year.
That dollar figure is contained in a new study released by the National Society of Actuaries on what the opioid crisis has cost us.
Other estimates range from about $80 billion per year in a 2013 CDC report, to $500 billion a year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, in a 2017 study.
However, we missed any dollar figure for Gov. Jim Justice’s latest plan to turn back addiction.
This latest plan is a leftover from this year’s legislative session, that Justice referred to then as “Jim’s Dream,” which never woke up.
The new program, “Jobs & Hope in West Virginia,” still is patterned after Jim’s Dream — helping people get jobs as they recover from addiction.
But unlike Jim’s Dream, that would have cost the state $25 million, this new program may be operating on not much more than hope.
It’s difficult to be skeptical of almost anything that attempts to cure the opioid epidemic.
But as dreams go we keep waking up to this nightmarish crisis with little to show for the state’s erratic efforts.
As Justice said in December 2018, “I don’t know if this next step will fix it but if it won’t fix it then we need to do the next and the next and the next. We need to fix it.”
Those remarks came on the heels of appointing the third director — in 2018 — of the Office of Drug Control Policy.
He also announced then the formation of a 15-person Council on Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment.
And approaching two years later, we have yet to hear a word about a $10 million test program in two counties to find the model to fight the drug crisis.
There’s also been nary a mention of a comprehensive drug control report that was completed in June 2018.
Admittedly, it’s easy to understand why the state is floundering in its response to this crisis — it’s complicated.
Still, simply throwing money at this mother of all social ills and parading out new programs every couple of months is an ineffective strategy.
Just this week a series of public forums on substance abuse got underway statewide. The second one took place Wednesday in Fairmont.
Then there was the advent of Jobs & Hope this week, which perhaps is a step in the right direction, but for a state that has the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the nation, looks to be no match.
The opioid crisis is clearly getting more expensive but we have lost count of what it is we are doing about it.
