An EMT's view from the front lines of America's heroin crisis
Between 2014 and 2015, the state's opioid overdose deaths jumped 17%. In 2017 alone, Merry's EMTs have responded to nearly 1,000 overdoses, most of them involving heroin.
For decades, Huntington was a humming railroad hub. It's also home to Marshall University, the second-largest university in the state, and Saturdays in the fall are defined by football. But since the resurgence of heroin and opioids, Huntington has become a portrait of the problem -- a snapshot of the larger issue plaguing communities across America.
"I don't want people to think this is unique to Huntington," Merry said, "This problem is across the US. I think that we are open about our problem, I think we're aggressively trying to mitigate the problem, but no one knows the answer at this point."
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