Mountain State Spotlight

After months of questions around a new West Virginia law on harm reduction, and a legal challenge to its constitutionality, a federal judge has ruled that the measure is enforceable.

West Virginia lawmakers say the state needs a deal-closing fund to compete with other states. But the program doesn't specify how the money can — and can't — be spent.

Hunger in West Virginia — a complex problem tied to shuttered grocery stores, infrastructure issues and generational poverty — has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem is one that advocates say requires state-level policy and funding to supplement the nonprofits and faith-based organizations that are trying to reach those in need.

The bills Republicans passed in West Virginia included a ban on transgender girl student athletes participating in girls’ school sports, weakening unions’ abilities to collect dues from employees, and restrictions on harm reduction programs.

Families of the two victims filed lawsuits raising serious questions about the shootings. Roane County officials deny those allegations.

The city and county are half way through an unlikely federal trial.

In the federal courthouse in Charleston it's big shot lawyers, hefty legal fees and weeks of witnesses called to the stand. But in individual drug cases, an assembly line of West Virginians move through the overrun court system.

Lawmakers will be in Charleston on Thursday for a special session, where they’re expected to work their way through a laundry list of appropriations for surplus dollars. Among them: roughly $9 million to delay a planned increase in the costs West Virginia counties pay for every person they commit before trial to the state’s regional jail system.

Huntington and Cabell County were scheduled to finish calling witnesses this week in the sweeping trial. Now they have a few more days, but nearly a dozen witnesses remain.

In 2015, with opioid-related overdose deaths at a record high in West Virginia, the trade group for the country’s largest drug distributors hatched a plan to “turn the tide.”