Huntington shows why economic hope is critical
Here is a question you may never have thought about: What do heroin and jobs have to do with one another?
We ask that in the context of a well-done albeit hard to read Web article by cable network CNN. You can find it at http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/health/huntington-heroin/index.html.
The article is about Huntington, West Virginia. You may have heard of the town. It is home to Marshall University. The community was the backdrop for “We are Marshall”, the inspirational movie about the rebuilding of the university’s football program after a plane crash killed the entire team.
Huntington is a town in Appalachia that in some ways resembles our own. The city sits on the banks of the Ohio River. It is home to 49,000 people, roughly midway between Paducah’s population and that of the city and McCracken County combined.
But one thing about the town is decidedly not like Paducah. CNN says that one in four people there — 12,000 in all — is hooked on heroin or another opioid. One of the city’s hospitals has a neonatal therapeutic unit for babies born addicted. One of 10 newborns there comes into the world addicted to heroin or some other substance. The CNN story says parents of those children are usually absent from the ward, presumably off shooting up somewhere while nurses deal with their inconsolable children.
Police in Huntington have little time for traditional police work. Nor do firefighters spend the bulk of their time fighting fires. Rather they serve as medical first responders saving members of the local populace from overdoses.
CNN says Huntington officers have become expert in administering Narcan, a prescription drug that can reverse opioid overdoses. It has generated a terminology in the addict community, where the question posed is: How many times have you been Narcanned? CNN says the answer not infrequently is 3-5 times.
How does a town — a college town at that — get to such a state? Some of it is cultural, with generations of families having histories of substance abuse. But what really stands out about the town is the job losses. Between 1970 and 2010 the town lost 25,000 residents as factories tied to the region’s coal mines closed amid a prolonged slump.
The result has been blight in many once-vibrant middle class neighborhoods and falling incomes. The median household in Huntington now earns just under $28,700 and one-in-three people live in poverty. The story from there is not unlike what has been seen in pockets of eastern and northern Kentucky. With despair came drugs. First it was opioid pills. Then when legislatures cracked down with “pill mill” legislation, cheaper, more-potent heroin took root.
The late Fred Paxton, longtime publisher of this newspaper, often intoned a belief that: “There are not many problems in life that a good job won’t solve.” What we see in Huntington and parts of Kentucky as well is the reverse side of that. When people don’t have hope and the dignity provided by good jobs, entire cultures can be laid waste.
That is why on a broader scale Americans’ fears that good jobs are disappearing have produced so much political upheaval, as evidenced in the current presidential race. The political establishment has failed to deliver quality jobs, and the social consequences have been far-reaching. The presidential nominees falter when they focus on other things. Jobs and the economy are the issue that will decide the 2016 election.
By Jim Paxton
The Paducah Sun
