Thing that saddens me is this article goes to great lengths to talk about the economic impact on the state, without so much as try and pinpoint the REASON they

Thing that saddens me is this article goes to great lengths to talk about the economic impact on the state, without so much as try and pinpoint the REASON they have such a huge problem with opioids. This is the only paragraph on one of the probable causes: In 2012, then-state Attorney General Darrell McGraw filed lawsuits against more than a dozen drug wholesalers, accusing the companies of fueling West Virginia’s drug problem by shipping an excessive number of pain pills to the state. The lawsuit alleged that the drug problem cost the state $430 million a year, and projected that those costs would rise to $695 million by 2017. So they're suing drug companies not because an excessive amount of people are dying, it's because it's costing the state $600+ million? - How about pumping a few billion into treatment centers so people have a way out instead of jumping from pain pills to heroin to fentanyl and then ODing on fentanyl? - How about pumping a few billion dollars into finding and developing new methods to combat chronic pain? This would include alternative methods and such things like CBD oils or making medicinal marijuana legal in all 50 states? - How about imposing stricter limits on what doctors can prescribe or just banning the drugs all together? - How about making billions of federal money available to states to try give them additional resources to combat the root problem instead of just adding more police officers to put non-violent addicts in jail? There's so many things we could be doing and yet, nobody is really doing anything about it. As soon as you start talking about this as an economic issue, you totally lose me. This is about real people and you shouldn't be concerned about the economic impact to your state, since that's not the root of the cause. Fix the root causes (there are many) and those economic issues will fix themselves.