CHARLESTON, W.Va. — More hope is coming to families in trying to help their loved ones battling with opioid addiction.
The Hope Family Drug Summit will be held at University of Charleston January 15.
The United States Attorney’s Office Southern District of West Virginia, the Drug Enforcement Administration, among several other agencies will be host to the national event.
U.S Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia Will Thompson said the summit is for family members to become better informed about what they can do to help their loved ones struggling with substance use disorder as well as learn more about prevention and treatment options for them.
“Unfortunately there is a lot of people who succumb to this, but this right here is a way for us to educate families and the general public of ways to help their family members,” said Thompson.
He said there will be speakers from WVU School of Medicine, UVA School of Medicine, law enforcement agencies, counselors, among other experts.
Thompson said it’s always difficult for him to see families have to watch their loved ones go down a bad path and struggle with addiction, and he hopes this summit can serve as a source of help and support to them.
“I’ve dealt with this almost my entire career, as a lawyer, as a judge, and now as a U.S. attorney, and telling people what to do and giving them the right direction is something I’ve struggled with, and that’s why we’re putting together this drug summit to give people better direction on that, to give them a way of possibly saving their family members,” he said.
Thompson said this summit will also highlight the efforts that law enforcement and organizations across the state have done to help alleviate the drug crisis so far, including the recent major accomplishment in the decline of overdose deaths in the state.
He said he believes his office has at least played a small part in that.
“We’ve changed the focus away from marijuana and street level drug dealers and more to bringing in the large quantities, I mean we’ve talked before about how we’re arresting and convicting people for bringing in hundreds of pounds of this poision,” he said.
Thompson said they are also assisting in other efforts as well, such as making sure treatment programs are being conducted in the right ways and assisting in prevention efforts such as through Naloxone distributions.
He said family members of those struggling with addiction are looking for a light at the end of the tunnel for their loved ones, and he hopes this summit can help provide that for them.
“We’ve got some wonderful speakers lined up that can say yes, your family member can recover from this, they can come back and be your son, daughter, mother, father, whatever the case might be, and yes, this is not an end all diagnosis, there is help,” said Thompson.
The summit is free and open to the community. It will begin at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 15.
You can go to the Southern District of WV website where you can find registration links for the summit.