As West Virginia churns from one drug crisis to next, 3 with boots on ground call for better enforcement, treatment & education – WV News

West Virginias history of lagging most of the nation in many categories is well documented. And so, too, is the premise that the Mountain State often is at, or near, the cutting edge in a dubious category: The very latest trends in substance use.

These days, as The New York Times German Lopez reported recently, synthetic drugs the type made in a laboratory, like fentanyl or methamphetamine are leading the way and helping produce more overdose deaths than ever before in the country (over 100,000 in 2021).

You know, were behind the nation in most things except for drug addicts, said the commander of the Greater Harrison Drug & Violent Crimes Task Force, whos been enforcing drug laws in some capacity for 31 years.

The synthetic portion of that article, weve suffered with that for a couple of years now. The meth is off the charts. During the pandemic, when they had the border basically, all borders shut down, we saw a doubling of the price of everything, which actually slowed things down a little bit. Made things a little a little bit more expensive, he said.

But now theres no lack of anything that you want to get. If youre in little old Harrison County, West Virginia, but you want to get 10 pounds of meth, you can get 10 pounds of meth. If you want to get enough fentanyl to kill the East Coast, you can get enough fentanyl to kill the East Coast. You can get what you want, the commander said.

Bridgeport Interim Police Chief Mark Rogers also spent several years assigned to the Greater Harrison task force.

I prepared the last years report to [Bridgeport City] Council for 2021 and went through the numbers, and just generally speaking between the task force, [Mountaineer Highway Interdiction Team South], our officers alone, we recovered enough fentanyl just in theory to kill half of West Virginia, using the 1,000-microgram dose, Rogers said.

So I look at that and I think from my time at the task force, [fentanyl] was very rare. You might buy a patch that was divvied out in micrograms in the medical sense. Its astronomical, the problem we have with it now, because not only are they doing it with cut product as the commander talked about but you have drug dealers who peddle this as heroin and its actually not. Its fentanyl, Rogers said.

And then you have now the introduction of pill presses. And there are drug users who thought that they could use a certain type of drug, you know, be it a pill form that goes through the vetting process that the government has for medications, Rogers said.

They think theyre getting that, and now theyre finding out its fentanyl, which instituted the One Pill Can Kill idea that the DEA has promoted for quite a while now. I dont think this problem is going away. Synthetics are the hardest ones, I think, to chase because they will ever evolve the chemistry to try to, they believe, outwit the government [with] their analogs. They think that they can jump into something else, Rogers said.

Recently, I think there was a thing that came out that there is now an opioid that is three times stronger than fentanyl. And its just the promotion by drug traffickers to get a stronger product so they can make a larger cut to make volume that ultimately ends up on our streets. I dont know that this is going away, Rogers said.

Harrison Sheriff Robert Matheny is the recently elected chairman of the Greater Harrison Drug & Violent Crimes Task Forces Board of Control. He also has been a law enforcement officer for decades, from serving as a patrol officer, detective and administrator at the Clarksburg Police Department, to a later stint as police chief in Wheeling.

Matheny, Harrison sheriff since 2017, clearly is vexed by some of the roadblocks for both drug enforcement and substance use treatment.

Its certainly no reflection on our federal partners. Weve got great federal partners, but we dont have many of them, Matheny said. I always say if the federal government wanted to make a dent in this problem, they could. Its never going to go away, but there could be a dent made in it.

You look at here on a local level, we provide the resources. Bridgeport attaches a couple guys, we do, Clarksburg [does] to the [Greater Harrison] drug task force, which is important and its great. But as [the commander] said, you have two postal inspectors in the area. You probably got a handful of DEA, FBI, go through the alphabet soup, whatever. I just think there could be more buy-in from the federal government to help us out here locally, Matheny said.

Look what they did with COVID, how much money they threw at it, and what changes have been made over the past couple of years. Could you imagine once we get past this pandemic if they would throw those funds towards treatment, investigation, enforcement, you know, all the things that are important, as the commander said, if we would throw that kind of seriousness at this, Matheny said.

And Im not saying that our guys arent serious, and we dont take it serious, but as a whole, if the entire federal, state and local governments would take a serious approach. At the end of the day, it comes down to funding. If they would throw the serious funds to get the boots on the ground to work with our guys, we could make a dent in it, Matheny said.

But, I dont see that happening. Weve known that since President Nixon started the whatd they call it? the War on Drugs back in the 70s. And were still fighting the same thing. It is frustrating. But I will say kudos to the guys that we have out here working, even the patrol officers and patrol deputies. They try their hardest, Matheny said.

The three veteran officers agree theres a definite need for working on reducing the demand for drugs, including the synthetics. But theyre also not backing down from balancing that with trying to curb supply.

The commander recalled one especially successful operation that shuttered a head shop in Clarksburg that was selling huge quantities of the synthetic drug known as bath salts (cathinones).

After it was shut down in 2012, it was impossible for a long time to get the synthetic bath salts in the area, the commander said.

There was a nice period of time when the sole supply at that time was taken out and there was a nice lull in incidences, the commander said. But, they found a way to get it through the mail from China. Not to the scale and not with the ease that it once had been when that store was just wide open. But they work hand-in-hand. Someone will always take the risk to get it to the people that want it. Youve got to focus on both to make it successful.

Interdiction with synthetics can range from stops at the border to postal inspectors intercepting mailed shipments. The commander notes the equation of many dealers: Theyll send 10 packages in the mail fully anticipating two will be intercepted. Or theyll send 10 mules drug carriers across the border, also anticipating only an 80% success rate.

He recalls when the same kind of math was used in shipping cocaine to southern Florida. At first, cartels sent cocaine on ships. When that method was targeted by law enforcement, the supply method switched to planes dropping shipments, and later, after efforts to thwart air supply, to submarines making deliveries, the commander said.

Supply will always find a way to get it, but if you can choke on them, you increase their costs, the commander said. And I think largely the cartels in Mexico, that [New York Times] articles dead on about: You know, I could send enough fentanyl over, something the size of a baseball that you can cut down and make X amount of dollars. But if I wanted to do that in marijuana, my God, itd be a tractor-trailer.

If I wanted to do it in cocaine, it would be a large shipment. Meth would be a large shipment. But fentanyl, its small. Its hard to detect. You [take] pure fentanyl and get it over here and then you bust it, you cut it to where its what were seeing on the street, thats a small thing to [accomplish]. And it doesnt help that the borders just basically wide open.

Detecting synthetics provides its own challenges. But Matheny said one tool thats proven effective is using patrol officers, including road deputies or those specially assigned, such as with Mountaineer Highway Interdiction Team South, to pinch them on another arrest and find that they have this product.

Then we get with our guys on the task force, the experts with it. Maybe we try to tie him back to a larger group or larger-scale, you know, involvement in it. And, you know, thats how we do it, and it works, Matheny said.

Rogers would like to see more money, training and personnel dedicated to education of young people to try to reduce the demand early on.

I think the DARE program was a great program, and for some reason I know that society has changed in the way that they deliver information and then take it in. But there has to be something that we can come up with as a nation to help fix this and get that information across that doesnt normalize drugs whatsoever, Rogers said.

And I think its been a mixed signal from our government. Locally, I think that you have lots of people who have lived in households where now youre talking multi-generational families that parts of those families are drug users, drug abusers, have addiction problems. And it normalizes it, unfortunately, for a large sector of society. And we need to make sure that theyre well aware that that isnt normal and there should be options for them to get the help that they need and help alleviate that one desire to, I guess, dabble in it, Rogers said.

The task force commander recalls that his son had more instruction in middle school on bicycle safety than on drug awareness, and that makes no sense to me. The commander also recollects that, when he was a youth, the DARE program scared the [expletive] out of me about drugs.

I dont know if its because drugs are so personal at a political level or at a family level, that people just dont want to talk about it in that sense of scaring their children; Im not sure. I know how my house is run. My kids are scared of drugs. I take my kids in the car and take them and see the [expletive] parts of town and Im like, this is where you end up. If you use drugs, this is the lifestyle you have to look forward to. That person was a star athlete ... in Clarksburg that kid was a stud in basketball. Now look at him just waiting for somebody to flip him a $20 piece of crack. I still preach scaring the hell out of my kids, at least about the dangers of it. I just dont know why were not doing it on a national level. I dont get it, the commander said.

He believes the government is right to spend money on handing out supplies of Narcan to users, because it saves lives, but we should also be spending some money on education awareness with youth.

In making that comment, he notes the one flaw about Narcan.

It does save a lot of lives. But, it also means a lot of repeat overdoses. And eventually ... they will be someplace where somebody doesnt have Narcan.

He also points out that the free Narcan has to be paid for by someone, and in the end, thats taxpayers.

Rogers said Bridgeport police have been carrying Narcan (naloxone) for about five years. At first, it was meant to revive those suffering from heroin overdoses, because that was the more prevalent drug in the region.

But last year now with the area besieged with fentanyl Bridgeport officers administered naloxone on three different occasions to save lives, Rogers said. He indicated that wouldnt even have been on his radar as a potential occurrence in Bridgeport 10 years ago.

And then he points out that trying to instill a healthy fear in young people is good. Its a chance to get them to say, Hmm, this could really wreck my life. It could potentially take it.

But he adds that a lot of people just dont get to see that part of society that law enforcement gets to see fairly routinely. And Rogers adds that addiction strikes everywhere, with users shooting up in so-called bad parts of towns, but in tony locations, too.

Its everywhere, and people just dont realize that until it smashes you in the face because a family member has an issue, Rogers said.

Matheny, Rogers and the commander also are clearly upset that while West Virginia is dealing with a drug crisis, the number of effective treatment facilities is still lacking.

We dont have the facilities to get the people the help that they need. And most of the people I dont want to say all but most of the people that are in that addictive lifestyle, they cant afford to go to Utah or Florida or California for rehab, the commander said. Its going to be a taxpayer thing. ... Its great for the people out in LA, they got money, and you know the Hollywood stars that get addicted and they get to go off to some of the best recovery places they can afford to hire life coaches. You take every junkie in Harrison County, give him a life coach, they probably have a chance, but they cant afford that, and the taxpayers cant afford it.

If somebody was to sit down and task me with, Hey, youre now in charge of fixing this problem and Ive been at it for a long time I would struggle with how in the world would we come up with the money. But I would take what money we did have and I would attack it at all levels, the commander said.

Matheny sees a danger zone between detox and treatment.

Ive always said, I think when you go to detox, you ought to go straight into treatment and then straight into life coach. In a perfect world, there would be somewhere you could drop them off, Matheny said. Because it seems like when they finally hit that low that they want to detox, they detox and theyve got full intentions of getting treatment. But then for various reasons, like the commander said you know, the money, insurance or whatever they cant get right into treatment. So theres this 30 days they cant do it.

The task force commander said the idea of waiting for a treatment bed needs to be all but eliminated if West Virginia wants to make a serious run at curbing the supply side of the substance use crisis.

Somebody detoxes ... and then, We got a bed for you in a month. That might as well be a lifetime to an addict, he said.

Interjected Sheriff Matheny: Because it probably isnt going to happen.

The commander and Rogers recounted watching addicts detox, and agree its horrible. Its physical, its mental, its everything in between, Rogers said.

And then users go to a detox and they have this false hope that theyre good, and absolutely theyre not. Theyre still years to go to try to work towards that being completely off of whatever it was they were addicted to, and in that short period of time in between the detox center and trying to find a bed Or most places, you dont get committed against your will, so its a voluntary thing where they can walk away, Rogers said.

And then as soon as they walk away, that first one could be the last one. Most of the overdoses I worked, thats what the majority of them were, I just needed to try one more time, and the next thing you know, that was their last time.

The commander has seen drug use in the region cycle from Dilaudid (pain pills), to heroin, to OxyContin (pain pills), then to heroin and now to the synthetics, including fentanyl and lab-made meth.

Theres always an ebb and flow, a rise and fall of different drugs. And again, in my opinion, it goes back to that attacking supply and demand evenly, the commander said. You know, you knock out the prescription pill issue if you knock out the demand maybe the heroin wouldnt have flowed back in, or vice versa, heroin to the pills.

Crack cocaine. I mean, we all went through that. That was an epidemic in Clarksburg. It was horrible in Clarksburg. Finally sentencings were stiffer, crack was kind of handled, and then meth pops up.

And you know, were talking two different ends. Were talking depressants, which some people seek, and stimulants. So it wouldnt shock me one bit that if we were able to get a handle on the meth problem, that we wouldnt see crack cocaine pop back up, the commander said.

The whole leave a sleeping dog lie, that doesnt work in this because that sleeping dog is the cartels and the organizations in South America and everywhere else. They see an opportunity. If we could curb the demand here, if we would attack demand.

Rogers has a word of warning for why not to get involved in drugs in the first place, or to move mountains to get out of that lifestyle.

I think Ive told you this before: All drugs are bad, and theres no quality control when it comes to whatever it is that somebodys peddling for money.

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As West Virginia churns from one drug crisis to next, 3 with boots on ground call for better enforcement, treatment & education - WV News