West Virginia—Huntington is a city in southern West Virginia (WV) and has been the center of the opioid epidemic in the state. The opioid crisis is a result of the capitalist pharmaceutical industry’s drive for maximum profits, and workers in WV were especially susceptible due to the decline of the coal industry over decades, leading to a high unemployment level (and many people having painful conditions due to the punishing nature of work in the mines).
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members in nearby Kentucky, on the border with West Virginia, have held cadre schools connecting the opioid crisis to capitalism. We know that a system rooted in profit, individualism and mass alienation can never provide any real and lasting solution to the social problem of addiction. Like the communists in revolutionary China who fought to eradicate opium addiction as a legacy of British colonialism, so shall we fight to build collective solutions that get to the root of what is destroying our class. Fighting for communism means we ensure decent and healthy lives for all workers.
Capitalist bosses weaponize addiction, refuse to fund treatment
Overdoses have ravaged Huntington, as shown in the documentary “Heroin(e)” available on Netflix. The sharing of syringes is another problem caused by the opioid epidemic. The re-use of syringes led to an HIV cluster in Huntington in 2018-2019. The spreading of disease was controlled in large part by the needle exchange program (West Virginia Watch, 11/19/25). There is also evidence that many of the HIV cases have gone unreported and that many people in Cabell County are undiagnosed (Mountain State Spotlight, 11/28/22).
Needle exchange programs allow people to get clean needles and dispose of dirty ones. This is extremely important in Huntington where dirty needles are often found in public spaces. This program was introduced there in 2015 but has faced significant challenges due to restrictions from local politicians. So, the program has always been limited and difficult to access, especially since 2021, when it faced increased challenges from the WV Senate. Now, due to an executive order from the Donald Trump administration and reduced funding from philanthropic organizations, the program officially ended in December 2025..
The program was always dependent on the funding it got from charitable donations, so now that those donations have decreased, the program cannot continue. A program like this was always weak and could not truly help all the working-class people who suffer from addiction. Under capitalism, instead of programs like this being a collective responsibility, they depend on the good graces of a few rich philanthropists who may or may not choose to donate to them. That does not even begin to get into the reasons why people become addicted to drugs under capitalism in the first place.
A prime example of how drug addiction and capitalism go hand in hand are those countries where revisionist “communist” governments like those of the former Soviet Union fell and were replaced with the “shock therapy” of capitalism. Suddenly stripped of any kind of social safety net, inevitably there was a dramatic increase in alcoholism, hard drug use, and prostitution. Furthermore, the U.S. government has been involved in the drug trade all around the world, despite its attempts historically to shift blame to Mexico, and most recently to Venezuela. For example, Trump recently pardoned the infamous drug trafficking ex-president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández (BBC, 12/2/25). All of this happens while capitalist governments refuse to fund community-based solutions to drug addiction and instead turn to mass incarceration.
Uproot capitalist-caused addiction, fight for communism
We in PLP know more must be done to organize about this issue. West Virginia and Kentucky are both historical battlegrounds between the workers and the bosses. But when so many workers are dealing with addiction, and in turn infectious diseases, it makes fighting back against this rotten system much more difficult. Only a mass communist party can organize workers around the line that the source of the opioid crisis, and all that results from it, is capitalism.
The liberal bosses have often overlooked West Virginia, meanwhile the Small Fascists have had easy victories in the state. As communists, it is our job to provide a real, revolutionary solution and expose both factions of the ruling class as racist murderers. But it is only possible to organize workers in West Virginia, and everywhere, by growing the Party. Join the PLP and fight for communism!
