Issue Position: Fighting the Opioid Epidemic

Issue Position

Morrisey has made fighting substance abuse a top priority for the Office. He has been leading one of the most aggressive, comprehensive efforts to combat the substance abuse crisis facing West Virginia. In 2015, he established a partnership with the U.S. Attorney's Office in West Virginia's Northern District which designated two special federal prosecutors to help prosecute drug traffickers. He has also partnered with neighboring Ohio's Attorney General for the Taking Back Our Communities conference, a faith-based initiative to tackle the substance abuse crisis with a grassroots approach. Morrisey has dramatically expanded his office's substance abuse capabilities, including increasing the number of investigators in his office to five.
In May 2016, Morrisey announced a comprehensive Best Practices Initiative aimed at dramatically reducing the use of opioids in West Virginia by 25 percent. In June 2016, his office teamed up with the Boards of Medicine and Osteopathy to launch a campaign to educate consumers about the risks of using opioids.

His office is vigorously enforcing the state's consumer protection laws and has already obtained a number of critical settlements which will help reduce the oversupply of opioids in the state. Morrisey has also sought to return money to the state's General Fund to eliminate the backlog at the state crime lab and to help address the substance abuse epidemic from a supply, demand, and educational perspective.

In the summer of 2016, Morrisey helped award grants to place incinerators in different parts of the state so that unused and expired medications can be disposed of properly.

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