West Virginia and want to come home because, at the end of the day, that’s the most special thing about our state: We’ve got fantastic, fantastic people, and people want to come home. It’s a plain fact that West Virginia is one of the lowest-ranked states on a range of socioeconomic indicators. What’s it going to take to turn this ship around? West Virginia has this incredibly rare window of opportunity in front of it, but also has a serious set of challenges. We’ve been declining in population for the past 40 years. We have an aging population. And it’s going to create this perfect actuarial storm where, eventually, we don’t have enough of a productive tax base working to justify the big, bloated existence of government. And that is going to be a very, very bad day for the state of West Virginia. Bond ratings get affected, and the cost of government dramatically increases. It becomes a travesty. And the real way to fix that is through economic growth and to grow the population of the state. We have this incestuous good ol’ boy system that’s been running our state for far too long. And it gets in the way of actually managing government efficiently and effectively. That’s one of the first things that need to change. We’re also dead last in just about everything from the economy to education to the number of grandparents raising grandkids. And that’s what’s happened, [grandparents raising grandchildren] with the opioid epidemic — it has absolutely decimated a portion of the up-and-coming generation. Does everyone in West Virginia know someone affected by the opioid crisis? Me, myself. In my first year of marriage, I had to choose between drugs and alcohol and my wife. I used just about every drug underneath the sun, but my real demon was alcohol. But I’ve been sober from alcohol and opiates for 20 years. Addiction has impacted just about everybody. I understand it and understand what detox is. I understand where we go so wrong with rehabilitation; I understand the entire demon. And it’s something that I’m very passionate about wanting to get involved and fix. Because everywhere around the country, we do rehabilitation wrong. What the long-term data and studies tell us is that it takes 13 to 30 months. You have to have individual and group sessions. You have to have responsibilities and jobs inside of the community. You have to have rigorous exercise. You have to have a foundation of faith. And you have to have a purpose. One of the number one reasons for relapse is a lack of economic opportunity or economic mobility. This leads to your economic plans, which seem centered on workforce development. I’m 1,000% convinced that we need to incorporate trade training into the last stages of long-term rehabilitation to not only provide economic mobility, but to solve problems. We’ve got an entire generation of kids that can’t do anything. There’s a workforce participation issue, and there’s also a major issue for demands and trades. As automotive dealers, we know how hard it is to find mechanics, but I’m talking about boilermakers, masons, HVAC repairmen, welders, carpentry, electricians and plumbers. The list just goes on and on of people who can do stuff with their hands. These are high-demand jobs of the future because we don’t have enough of them. And so we need to not only fix long-term rehabilitation by focusing on rewiring the pathways to the brain of the addict, but there is a problem-solving function, which is trade training and minimizing the chances of relapse. H. D. (Dutch) Miller founded Dutch Miller Chevrolet in 1961. Now owned and operated by Dutch’s son, Matt, and two grandsons, Chris and Sam Miller, the business has grown to include Chevrolet, Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, Hyundai and Kia. The group employs 300 people and proudly serves the Tri-State from Huntington, Barboursville and Charleston locations, in addition to Southwest Virginia and Charlotte, N.C. 8 Virginia Auto Dealer
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