Students From State Ravaged By Opioid Addiction Share Insight

SOUTHAMPTON, NY — Students who've been battling on the front lines of the insidious opioid crisis in West Virginia headed to Long Island this week to share their stories of devastation and work toward solutions across the board.

The students, from Tug Valley High School, will participate in an opioid forum at Southampton High School on Thursday, July 11 at 9 a.m. The West Virginia students are on Long Island for a week-long visit with students from Northport High School, a release said.

According to the release, "Kermit, West Virginia is one of the most impoverished communities in the country and is believed to have been one of the epicenters of the opioid epidemic. In 2016, a Pulitzer Prize winning report revealed that wholesaler pharmaceutical companies recklessly flooded Kermit with more than 12 million hydrocodone pills between 2007 and 2012 creating overdose deaths five times more than average."

Students from Northport High School visited Kermit during the past winter and invited the students to Long Island in July, the release said.

The Northport Opioid Task Force was modeled after the Southampton Opioid Task Force and the West Virginia students expressed interest in learning more about what Southampton is doing to combat the opioid crisis, the release added.

Thursday's forum will include Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman and members of the Southampton Addiction and Recovery Committee, including Southampton Town Police Chief Steven Skrynecki and former News 12 Anchor Drew Scott, who co-chaired Southampton's Opioid Task Force and who lost his beloved granddaughter Hallie Rae to the scourge of addiction.

Students from Southampton, Northport and Huntington High Schools will join the students from West Virginia for the forum on the opioid epidemic.

"I’m looking forward to hearing from the teens from West Virginia and how they’re fighting addiction," Scott said. "We want to know what works and what doesn't.”

According to Kim Raha of Northport High School, who helped to organize the forum, Kermit, W. Va. is "one of the most impoverished communities in our country and part of ground zero for our nation's opioid epidemic."

Through Friday, students will take part in events focusing on leadership, empowerment and community service, including a community forum that took place Wednesday at the Huntington Cinema Arts Centre, attended by Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Rep. Tom Suozzi.

"We will be facilitating a conversation focusing on the experiences of our diverse youth from Kermit, W. Va., Northport, Huntington and Southampton as they exchange ideas about how we as a community can address our mental health issue in relation to our nation's opioid epidemic," Braha said.