Depending on which set of figures you believe, there are as few as 40,000 or as many as 140,000 West Virginians who are addicted to drugs. Some members of the Legislature believe the higher number is closer to reality. But whatever the correct number may be, the seriousness of the problem can no longer be ignored.

Actually, these numbers only reflect those who are being treated, so West Virginia probably is in the same category as the rest of the nation where the current estimate is that 1 of 10 people suffers from some kind of substance abuse.

That's why Delegate Craig Blair, a Berkeley County Republican, will introduce a bill this week to require everyone who receives federal food stamps, a welfare check or unemployment compensation in West Virginia to submit to a drug test or lose that taxpayer assistance. He and others are convinced the highest drug activity occurs during the first days of the month when the government checks are received.

Blair said he had been told that at a Martinsburg hospital in his district five babies born in a single day were all addicted to drugs at birth because of their mother's history of substance abuse. It happened the same weekend that two daughters of a well-known public official at the opposite end of the state were arrested for drug trafficking.

Critics in the House of Delegates claim Blair's bill is unconstitutional. But there is a long-standing legislative adage that any bill is constitutional until a court says otherwise. So this argument amounts to nothing more than political expediency.

There are many legislators on both sides of the aisle, though, who do realize the substance abuse problem in this state -- and indeed nationwide -- has reached crisis proportions. Concerns about the cost of testing thousands of people for the presence of drugs in their bodies are understandable, but the cost of doing nothing will be far greater.

As chairman of the House Health and Human Resources Committee, Delegate Don Perdue, D-Wayne, has become a champion in the fight to combat this state's myriad of health care problems. So it is worthwhile to consider the statistics he mentioned to describe the dilemma in what seemed a lot like a tacit endorsement of Blair's bill.

He said this state alone spends $2 billion annually to treat the growing number of people suffering from substance abuse even though the state's entire Medicaid budget is only $2.6 billion. He also believes both this state and our society have both failed to confront the problem.

Dr. Margaret Staggers, a House member who is an emergency room physician in Fayette County, said she routinely handles cases where a young male substitutes his girlfriend's urine for a drug test and is "surprised" when she has to tell him that he's pregnant. She believes the federal government has admitted it has lost the war on drugs as Delegate Blair said and is now content to run a "maintenance" program to treat drug addiction.

Can we really afford to throw in the towel on this problem?

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The plight of the state's nearly 400 volunteer fire departments has already captured the attention of legislators for the second straight year. A year ago, efforts to help these valuable community assets that are having difficulty now attracting new recruits helped to torpedo the effort to solve pension fund problems for the larger cities' police and fire departments.

This year, lawmakers are going to consider a tax increase on insurance policy premiums to come up with about $5 million a year. This would allow up to $12,000 a year for each volunteer unit to give a pension based on years of service to volunteers when they retire.

There was only one dissenting vote as an interim committee meeting just before the session began recommended a boost from .55 of 1 percent to .75 of 1 percent in the tax every West Virginian pays on insurance premiums. Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin, D-Mingo, is one of the leading advocates of this idea.

Two aspects of this proposal could give it a better than even chance of success despite the prevailing effort to ignore all tax boosts this year. First, it will enable the cities to make their case for help with their under funded police and firemen's pension plans without any interference. Second, it also provides that the unused portion of the $5 million in new taxes every year can be earmarked for helping the volunteer fire departments purchase equipment.

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The prediction that West Virginia can count on 14,400 new jobs if the state gets $240 million from the federal stimulus plan for highway repairs and construction, made by the executive director of the state contractors' association that figures to get much of that money, may be overly optimistic.

Even he only anticipates 3,840 new jobs, or 16 for each $1 million received for his membership. He said the rest would occur with secondary businesses that supply the contractors (3,840) and the dollars spent by those 7,680 workers at grocery stores and other retailers (6,720). If this estimate were to ultimately prove correct, this alone would put more than one-third of the state's 38,000 unemployed people back to work.

Tom Miller is a retired state government reporter for The Herald-Dispatch. He is a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch opinion page.

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