Director, Commonwealth Policy Center

Four Kentuckians die every day from an opioid overdose which puts us in the middle of a crisis and the federal government is stepping in. The University of Kentucky received an $87 million federal grant to combat the crisis and measure the impact of treatment, prevention, and recovery interventions.  The goal is to find prevention programs that work and it's one thing that can be done to intervene. But the question is whether it's enough. Money and resources and programs are good and helpful. But they cannot address the fundamental questions of alienation, emptiness and escape that lead people to use opioids in the first place. The drug is filling a void or numbing some deep pain. In other words there's a spiritual dimension that needs to be addressed. And it will take resources of another kind to fix this.