Obama Found Religion On The Heroin Epidemic In Charleston, West Virginia

If President Barack Obama is able to forge bipartisan consensus on tackling the opioid epidemic roiling the nation, it will be with an assist from David Grubb.

Grubb is not a scientist working on a breakthrough medication to combat heroin addiction. Hes not a public health advocate arguing for a major investment in recovery clinics. Hes not a member of Congress, shepherding a bill to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to law enforcement and medical facilities.

Hes a former state senator in West Virginia who now heads a consumer protection and employment law firm in Charleston. He has a story -- heart-wrenching and all-too-common -- about the toll that heroin takes on a life. His second-oldest daughter was introduced to the drug in 2009 and has since been in rehab multiple times. And, on Oct. 21, 2015, he had an audience when Obama hosted a community forum on opioid abuse in his hometown.

Last month, the middle of August, our daughter overdosed, Grubb said then, standing amid a room full of fellow West Virginians, his voice cracking as he held back tears. We found her in her bedroom, tourniquet on her arm, syringe next to her. She was already turning blue. My wife administered CPR. We called 911. While we were waiting, I held her and said, Don't leave us yet."

It was her fourth overdose, Grubb went on. It usually takes more than one time. And we think this one will be the one. We are full of hope. But we understand the pain -- the pain in this room, the pain the families feel. The concern we have is access -- where do you get the treatment? How do you get the treatment?

Four months later, those questions still confront Obama as Grubbs story continues to resonate with him. Multiple sources said the president discusses that meeting in West Virginia as a moment when a brighter light went on, a time when it dawned on him just how pervasive this epidemic has become.

"He said the stories were heartbreaking and that it was striking how many high-ranking officials there were whose own families had been affected," said one governor who has met with Obama on the opioid crisis.

"He got very emotional," a White House official said of the president's town hall moment with Grubb. "You're in this deep-red [conservative] environment, but people are just opening up their hearts on this. [The president] sort of was taken aback at how candid people were talking about this."

It's one thing to hear heartbreaking stories from the stage at an opioid event. But everywhere Obama went in West Virginia, he ran into people affected by the crisis. And often, those people were elected officials, something Obama found surprising enough that he remarked about it multiple times privately, according to people he spoke to about the trip.

Obama "might have been coming thinking it was going to be the low end of the socioeconomic ladder, people who are challenged, poor people, and he saw an array of people," said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), who accompanied Obama. "He sat by a lady who sat up on that stage and talked about losing her son and this is a lady who has done well in life. This epidemic doesnt have any home. It is getting them whether you are Democrat or Republican, poor or rich, it makes no difference."

Grubb is a Democrat. Charleston Mayor Danny Jones, who served in the state legislature with Grubb, is a Republican. When Obama travels to towns and cities around the country, he's usually met at the airport by the local mayor, and it was no different in Charleston. But it wasn't a typical car ride.

"I'd never ridden in a car with a president before," Jones recalled, even one not all that popular statewide. For Jones, though, this was no abstract political event. As he told the president, his own son Zach, now 26, has long struggled with heroin addiction, and had been clean less than a year at that point.

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