West Virginia General Patrick Morrisey first spoke about how the opioid abuse epidemic has impacted the Mountain State. He said it was one of the essential challenges the state is facing. West Virginia needs to not only have good tax rates and avoid over-regulation, but it needs strong workforce participation, too.
“We need to drive our workforce participation rate through the roof,” Morrisey said. “We have an older population and we have many people who are disabled, so West Virginia historically has been at the bottom in terms of workforce participation rates, and most certainly some of the aspect of that is due to the drug problem that’s been proliferating in our state going back to the 1980s. It’s been a huge challenge, so I think West Virginia leaders have to continually focus on this. I think if we can come up with broader solutions dealing with the drug epidemic, it’s going to be one part of a multi-faceted solution in term of how we’re going to drive workforce participation rates up much, much higher.”
