MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Eliminating the drug epidemic in West Virginia may be the answer to stopping human trafficking, according to state Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Morrisey.

“Human trafficking really is a very serious crime,” Morrisey said Thursday on WAJR’s Morgantown AM. “It’s actually one of the most prevalent around the world and, in fact, it goes hand-in-hand with drug trafficking. It’s a very big issue because if you are victimized by drug trafficking, that tends to attract human trafficking and other types of elicit crime.”

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, human trafficking is the fastest growing trafficking in the world and second largest criminal industry in the world, falling second to none other than drug trafficking.

“I think you have to start with the drug problem,” Morrisey said. “Whenever you have a state which has significant challenges related to drug abuse, it tends to be a magnet for human trafficking and other types of crime. So, that’s why it’s so important to go after drug abuse with everything we have.”

In 2017, Morrisey helped launch a training program to begin combating the drug problem in W.Va.

“We think it’s important,” he said. “We had a lot of success training law enforcement officers, and we’re expanding this to medical professionals and I think that’s going to help prevent a lot of human trafficking in our state in the future.”

Morrisey said he takes pride in working overtime to combat the drug and human trafficking epidemic in the state. He wants to work at finding the root causes of substance abuse and attacking regulations that negatively impact the economy. When he took office in 2013, Morrisey created the first-ever substance abuse fighting unit in W.Va. With the creation of the unit, Morrisey started to attack the pharmaceutical channel in an effort to cut down on the number of elicit pills being sold.

“There’s a lot that’s been done to try to go after the accountability that’s within the supply channel, but at the end of the day, you still have to change the rules of the road that help lead to this terrible problem,” he said.

After doing extensive research on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Morrisey discovered that there was an excess of elicit drugs circulating throughout the supply channel due to companies giving estimates and the DEA approving requests for prescription drugs instead of evaluating the medical need. He also found that the DEA wasn’t adequately consulting with the FDS, Division of Health and Human Services or law enforcement.

So, at the end of 2017, Morrisey filed a lawsuit against the DEA, arguing that the DEA needed to “dramatically change the formula.” According to him, if the lawsuit is successful and the DEA does change their formula, it will result in a 25 to 35 percent reduction in the amount of illegal pills in circulation.

“We’re forcing that change to make it more functional so the DEA does their job consistent with the statute,” he said. “So, there still needs to be more work done to change this statutorily so we never go back to such a terrible problem, but I am proud of the folks in my office. We’re the only office in the country, we led the way, filed the lawsuit to make this change and I’m hoping it’s going to have a phenomenal impact on our state.”

Story by Hannah Williams