Editor:

While I appreciate the breezy tone of some of the Gazette-Mail’s headlines (“It’s Hit the Fan” comes to mind), the July 9 front page headline, “Charleston, United Way to dole out opioid cash,” missed the mark.

“Dole out” is defined as giving or distributing as a charity. This settlement is to compensate victims and fund desperately needed opioid treatment, recovery and prevention efforts, necessitated by the over-marketing of OxyContin by Purdue Pharma. West Virginia was one of the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis, leading the country in per-capita drug overdose deaths in 2016. Addiction to OxyContin paved the way for increased use of other opioids, such as heroin and fentanyl, as regulation of prescription medicine tightened.

The number of overdoses in 2021 doubled in fi

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