Where opioids are driving the business of transporting dead bodies

The epidemic is getting worse. No Images? Click here     The Listen To America bus has pulled in to Charleston, West Virginia Sarah Ruiz-Grossman spent part of the day riding along with Fire Chief Jan Rader in the nearby town of Huntington. Rader, who is featured in the Netflix documentary “Heroin(e)” and has been a firefighter for over two decades, is the first female fire chief in the state. Rader and her team are on the front lines of the opioid crisis that’s decimating communities nationwide. West Virginia faces the highest rate of overdoses in the country. “About 26 percent of times my guys climb onto a fire truck, they’re going to an overdose,” she said. “When I started working as a first responder [23 years ago], it was 10 years before I saw significant death. Now kids we hire, 25 years old, are seeing 40 to 50 deaths a year. What’s that doing to them psychologically?” Rader pointed to a street corner in Huntington that she said her team comes to almost every day, often to respond to an overdose. And despite the sheer number of people she has had to revive, she expressed nothing but compassion for people struggling with drug addiction. “We don’t have a lot of money, but we’re finding ways to deal with it,” she said. “You don’t need a lot of money to do a lot of things: Kindness doesn’t cost a damn thing — and sometimes that’s what people need more than anything, just a little kindness.”   A grim business Over 880 people died of drug overdoses in West Virginia last year ― a record number — and the state’s bill for moving dead bodies has more than doubled since 2015. HuffPost partnered with the Charleston Gazette-Mail to investigate.   INSIDE THE INDUSTRY     A doctor's war against opioids   WVU School of Public Health Dr. Michael Brumage is a 25-year U.S. military veteran who runs a harm-reduction program that includes overseeing a clean needle exchange for opioid users in West Virginia. He talked to HuffPost about the challenges of addressing drug use: As you really peel back the onion, it’s not an epidemic. It’s an epidemic of epidemics, because you have everything from overdose deaths to the hepatitis C rate, which is now the No. 1 infectious killer in America. You have children who have been abandoned because their parents are using drugs. You have needles which are in public spaces, which is an environmental hazard. And just so many other aspects of this. This is a very, very complex public health emergency. And I’m not quite certain that most Americans or even most policymakers have grappled with the true complexities of where we are on a day-to-day basis.   HIS CHALLENGE The crisis of "crisis pregnancy centers" Crisis pregnancy centers are faith-based, anti-choice organizations that masquerade as medical facilities in order to trick people who are experiencing unplanned pregnancies. There are more than 30 of them in West Virginia. HOW THEY WORK Ready for the road Tomorrow is a travel day for us. We'll be in Pittsburgh on Friday — come find us in Schenley Plaza!     Join us virtually on the bus! Ride along with our editor-in-chief, Lydia Polgreen, as she dispatches news from the road via Facebook Messenger. Learn more about what it really means to be an American by signing up for our morning news brief.  Did a friend send you this? Subscribe here. For more politics news, check out our HuffPost Politics email. ©2017 HuffPost | 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 You are receiving this email because you signed up for updates from HuffPost Feedback | Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe   - - Preferences  |  Unsubscribe