In West Virginia, the epicenter of the opioid crisis, young women who got addicted to the drugs have turned to prostitution to support their drug habit. The usual pattern has been for the women to start by using prescription painkillers, then segueing to heroin, then to prostitution. Matt Meadows, a probation officer in Huntington who has witnessed numerous prostitution arrest reports, said, “They go from prescription painkillers to heroin to prostitution. It’s very common.”
The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in February that in 2016, West Virginia had the highest rate of opioid-related overdose deaths in the United States ― a rate of 43.4 deaths per 100,000, That figure had skyrocketed from 1.8 deaths per 100,000 in 1999.
According to NBC News, some of the women choose prostitution, but others are victims of sex trafficking. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Cogar stated that sex trafficking “is a crime of opportunity, and the pivot point for that opportunity is opioid addiction. Pimps often hold out [the] promise of drugs in return for women engaging in prostitution. We think that’s fueling a lot of the demand and supply.”
Matthew Perry, the Department of Homeland Security’s resident agent in charge, who investigates sex trafficking, echoed, “A lot of the addicts are from towns that went bankrupt when the coal industry collapsed. In some places, there just aren’t many other ways to make enough money to support a habit.”
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is now investigating the pharmaceutical companies and distributors who they say turned West Virginia into the epicenter of the crisis.
In 2017, 909 people died from fatal overdoses in West Virginia’s 55 counties, according to the West Virginia Health Statistics Center. NBC News reports, “Some struggling small cities like Williamson (population 3,200) were swamped with an astounding 6,500 pills per person over a decade, creating a new generation of addicts and further fraying the already torn social fabric.”