Liberal pundits and Democratic politicians like to claim that Republicans are living in the past, but one left-leaning senator's solution to solving the opioid epidemic that's affecting millennials is literally 45 years old.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) was on CNN Wednesday to discuss the epidemic of opioid overdoses facing his state. He decided that the only way to solve the crisis was to declare war on drugs.

“We need to declare a war on drugs, on illicit drugs,” Manchin told CNN’s Jake Tapper when asked what President-elect Trump should do to solve the opioid crisis.

The situation in West Virginia has grown to a state of emergency. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, in 2015, 725 people died of a drug overdose in West Virginia, which is nearly a 30 percent increase in the last two years.

Making matters worse is that drug companies have poured nearly $800 million in opioid painkillers into the state, making a huge profit while ignoring the growing crisis.

Still, the brilliant Senator clearly had no answers for his state.

Author Don Winslow wrote in Esquire Magazine in August 2016 that the growing opioid crisis was directly related to the legalization of marijuana. Drug lords in Mexico saw that they couldn't make profits off of pot, so they decided to invest in making heroin as pure, addictive, cheap, and deadly as possible.

The solution to this problem is going to take more than the same failed policy of the last 45 years.

Watch the clip below: