COLUMBUS, Ohio — Despite the public awareness of the opioid epidemic, record numbers of Ohioans are dying from drug overdoses.

State data shows unintentional drug overdoses rose nearly 33 percent from 2016 to 2017, claiming the lives of more than 4,000 people. Assistant professor of health policy at Ohio University Dan Skinner said, like any complex social phenomenon, understanding the opioid crisis is multi-faceted.

"So there's the role of stigma and thinking that addiction is about other people, and you have the role of pharmaceutical companies and the profit motive and the whole story about the misrepresentation of risk factors around OxyContin in particular,” Skinner said. “There's enough blame to go around, for sure."

Nationally, opioid overdose deaths began their gradual rise before the turn of the century; and in 2010, heroin overdoses began to spike. After 2014, synthetic drug overdoses skyrocketed and now are attributed to twice as many overdose deaths as opioids.

Libbie Crawford of East Liverpool understands the tragedy of opioid abuse. Her father suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after serving in World War II. She said he committed suicide when she was just a little girl after becoming addicted to painkillers. And she said she fears for other struggling families who don't have treatment options.

"We're going to lose an entire generation of people if we don't take care of this issue now,” Crawford said. “The war on drugs has not helped. My definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again."

Skinner said a "law and order" approach has been used in the past to deal with drug addiction, but it’s really a public health issue. And he said with the opioid epidemic, society is finally starting to see that it's not only happening in low-income communities.

"We've heard these narratives before people who say we 'were a good family, we went to church, we did the right things, my kids went to college,' all of those kinds of hallmarks of middle class - and I'll say it - white-mostly America,” Skinner said. “A lot of people with the opioid crisis all of a sudden learned that it was them too, that they weren't immune to this."

Since 2011, the Governor's Opiate Action Team has stepped up efforts to stop drug traffickers, ramped up youth drug prevention programs, worked with the medical community to reduce opioid prescriptions, and focused attention on medication-assisted treatment options. Part three of our series runs Wednesday and focuses on the cycle of addiction.

Reporting by Ohio News Connection in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


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A package to improve public safety is moving ahead in the California state Legislature - with a floor vote in the State Assembly on the first bill expected this week.

Assembly Bill 2215 puts into statute that police officers have the discretion to send people arrested for low-level offenses directly to supportive services.

Anthony DiMartino - government affairs director with the nonprofit Californians for Safety and Justice - said sometimes public safety is best served when people avoid arrest and instead get therapy, addiction support or help getting a job.

"We're also hoping to raise awareness that this is something officers can do, and then also encourage partnerships more with officers to look at what's in their community," said DiMartino, "as alternatives to jail booking."

A second bill would increase transparency and accountability on money sent to the counties as part of the Public Safety Realignment.

A third bill would require police officers, prosecuting attorneys and investigators to identify themselves any time they're interviewing a family member of someone killed or severely injured by police.

DiMartino said they also support AB 2499, which would ensure that survivors of violent crime and their family members can take unpaid time off work to address safety concerns and heal.

"We're hoping to broaden the scope a bit," said DiMartino, "and make it more clear that family members of victims are able to also tap into unpaid leave to support their family member that has been a victim."

A fifth bill would make it easier for justice-involved people and crime victims to speak freely during restorative justice programs - by making the communications inadmissible in other legal proceedings.

Missouri went through with its first execution of the year, as Brian Dorsey was put to death last night, just after 6 p.m. CT.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to stop Dorsey's execution. He was convicted of murdering his cousin Sarah Bonnie and her husband Ben nearly 20 years ago.

The advocacy group Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty launched several recent campaigns on Dorsey's behalf to spare his life.

Jenni Gerhauser, a cousin to both Dorsey and Sarah Bonnie, expressed belief in his redemption.

"Brian is more than the worst moment of his life," Gerhauser stressed. "There is so much more to him."

Gerhauser fondly remembered him as fun and charming from their visits during holidays. Dorsey's current lawyers said he was in a drug-induced psychosis when he killed the Bonnies in 2006 and his attorneys at the time had been offered money, preventing them from fighting the death penalty with his guilty plea deal.

Gov. Mike Parson confirmed Monday the state would move forward with Dorsey's death sentence, rejecting a separate request for clemency. More than 70 current and former corrections officers had urged the governor to commute Dorsey's sentence, arguing he had been rehabilitated.

Claudia Boyce, also a cousin in the family, said it should not be a decision for the state to make.

"You know, that's supposed to be God's decision, not ours," Boyce contended.

Dorsey received a lethal injection Tuesday evening. Lethal injection became an option for people on Missouri's death row in 1987, alongside lethal gas.


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Amid overcrowding and unsafe conditions in West Virginia jails, state lawmakers introduced bills that would allow judges to take a 'second look' at an individual's original sentence.

If a court determines they no longer pose a threat to the community, the person could be released, placed on supervision, or receive a shortened sentence.

Sara Whitaker - criminal legal policy analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy - said West Virginia is one of the few states that has seen its prison population balloon over the past decade, despite declining crime.

She noted that as of last month, more than 500 people in the state were in jail awaiting transfer to a prison.

"As a result, eight out of 10 of the regional jails in the state were beyond capacity," said Whitaker, "with hundreds of people assigned to sleeping on the floor."

The bills failed to advance this session, but Whitaker said advocates are hopeful lawmakers will consider them next year.

The state's jails remain among the deadliest in the country, with at least 91 people losing their lives while incarcerated in the past few years.

According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, jail bills cost counties $45 million in 2022.

Nationwide, long sentences have led to growth in the number of older people behind bars.

Whitaker pointed out that 'Second Look' legislation could help the state avoid turning its prisons into nursing homes, and said the number of elderly people in prison has tripled in the past two decades.

"In 2019, West Virginia had to open a dementia unit in one of its prisons," said Whitaker. "There are hospice units across multiple prisons. And experts predict that this is just only going to get worse."

Whitaker added that 'Second Look' policies also offer a way to correct past racial injustice in the criminal legal system.

Black people incarcerated in West Virginia are four times more likely than white people to be serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole, and five times as likely to be serving a life-without-parole sentence.




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