Do you have to leave Appalachia to find opportunity? One woman did and wants the region to receive more attention

Melissa Smith, center, left her Appalachian home behind
in search of a better life. (Melissa Smith photo via Fox News)

An upbringing surrounded by drug use, crime and poverty made one woman leave her Appalachian home in search of opportunity. She compares the region's problems to intercity issues, reports Teny Sahakian of Fox News. "Melissa Smith, 26, managed to leave her family and her hometown behind four years ago to build a better life, but she fears communities like hers will continue to rot without more attention. National media outlets report daily about the rampant crime and drug use afflicting major cities across the country. But Smith feels the Appalachia region as a whole doesn't get the same level of consideration, causing them to suffer in silence as they face similar issues."

Smith told Sahakian, "I just pray that something could be done, some opportunities could be created, rehabs could be made more readily available, and these people can get help and realize that there is a better life. But at the moment, it's just not talked about. Nobody talks about it." Sahakian reports, "Smith's grandmother raised her and her siblings in a trailer park in Corbin, Kentucky. Her mother, who struggled with drug addiction, was in and out of jail for most of her childhood. . . . Most of the kids she grew up with had at least one parent addicted to drugs. . . . Smith said she recently watched a YouTube video that featured interviews with Black Americans living in a poor area of California. She was shocked to hear how similar their stories were to her own."

The first wave of the opioid epidemic hit Appalachia during the 1990s and continued to gain steam through the 2000s when coal mine closures happened in quick succession. Smith said the pairing "ignited a cultural and economic downward spiral in rural areas across Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and other states in the region," Sahakian writes. "Although the entire nation is facing a drug crisis, Appalachia is disproportionately impacted, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission. In 2020, overdose deaths of people ages 25 to 54 were 61% higher in the region compared to the rest of the country."

"Smith said many kids she grew up with are now either on drugs, in jail or dead from an overdose and that methamphetamines, rather than opioids, have become the drug of choice ravaging her community," Sahakian reports. "Most families rely on welfare checks or selling drugs to get by, she said, and with only one factory remaining in her town, the ability to work hard and improve one’s life seems impossible. . . Between 2001 and 2021, employment in Appalachia only grew 1.5% compared to 12% for the rest of the U.S., according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." Smith told Sahakian: "They really don't have the opportunity to kind of improve or pull themselves up by their bootstraps."