Huntington August 15, 2016 — 28 Overdoses in Four Hours

Last verified: May 2026

The Four-Hour Cluster — What Happened

On the afternoon of Monday, August 15, 2016, dispatchers in Huntington, West Virginia began receiving overdose calls in unusually rapid succession. Over a roughly four-hour window, Huntington Fire Department, Cabell County EMS, and the Cabell-Huntington-Wayne Drug and Violent Crime Task Force responded to 28 overdoses. The cluster was traced to a batch of heroin contaminated with illicit fentanyl and possibly carfentanil that had entered the local drug supply. Two of the 28 patients died; the remaining 26 were resuscitated, in many cases requiring multiple naloxone doses to reverse respiratory depression. The cluster strained Huntington’s emergency-response infrastructure and produced national headlines within days. See Huntington / Marshall page.

Why August 15, 2016 Mattered Nationally

The Huntington cluster was not the largest single overdose event in the United States, but it became the most politically and culturally consequential. Reasons:

• The compressed time window (four hours) made the event narratively legible in a way diffuse county-level statistics were not
• Huntington was already on national radar as a representative Appalachian city dealing with the heroin and prescription-opioid wave
• Local first responders, journalists, and the mayor’s office moved aggressively to publicize the event and its harm-reduction implications
• The event was followed within months by Netflix and HBO documentary attention — particularly the 2017 short documentary Heroin(e), directed by Elaine McMillion Sheldon, which followed Huntington Fire Chief Jan Rader, Cabell County drug-court Judge Patricia Keller, and Brown Bag Ministry founder Necia Freeman; the film was nominated for the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject
• The cluster supplied a recurring exhibit in subsequent Congressional opioid-crisis testimony

Mayor Steve Williams — The Harm-Reduction Mayor

Steve Williams, a Democrat first elected mayor of Huntington in 2012 and re-elected in 2016, 2020, and (briefly) 2024, made the August 15 cluster a defining moment of his administration. Williams sued opioid manufacturers and distributors in federal court, joined the multi-district litigation, and spoke nationally about Huntington’s harm-reduction work. His administration backed expanded naloxone distribution, syringe-service-program operations (the Cabell-Huntington Health Department program, which became one of the most-publicized SSPs in the United States), drug-court funding, and recovery-housing capacity. Williams routinely appeared in national media as a representative voice of small-city Appalachian opioid-crisis response.

Williams’s 2024 Gubernatorial Run

In 2024, Williams entered the West Virginia gubernatorial race as the Democratic nominee, running on a platform that included recreational cannabis legalization, expanded harm-reduction infrastructure, and Mountain State economic diversification. Williams faced Republican Patrick Morrisey, the term-limited two-term Attorney General whose recoveries from opioid manufacturers and distributors exceeded $1 billion. The contrast was stark: Williams as the harm-reduction mayor pitching cannabis legalization to fund recovery; Morrisey as the opioid-litigation AG opposing recreational legalization on grounds of preserving recovery culture. Morrisey won decisively in November 2024 and was inaugurated as West Virginia’s 37th governor on January 13, 2025. The result indicated that explicit recreational-legalization campaigning was not yet a winning statewide strategy in the Mountain State, even with Maryland and Ohio neighbors having legalized. See Gov. Morrisey page.

Trulieve’s 100,000-Square-Foot Huntington Footprint

The post-2016 Huntington cannabis story is now a major chapter of the city’s economic life. Trulieve Cannabis Corp., the Tallahassee-based multi-state operator that opened West Virginia’s first dispensary in Sabraton (Morgantown) on November 12, 2021, operates a 100,000-square-foot cultivation and processing facility in Huntington — the largest single cannabis-industrial footprint in the Mountain State. The Huntington campus supplies Trulieve’s WV dispensary network with state-grown product under METRC seed-to-sale tracking. Trulieve also operates a Huntington dispensary serving Cabell County patients. See Trulieve page.

Coastal Retail and Harvest Care — Other Huntington Operators

Trulieve is not the only multi-state operator in Huntington. Coastal Retail, a Curaleaf-affiliated retail brand under the Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. portfolio (Cboe Canada: CURA; OTCQX: CURLF), operates a Huntington dispensary alongside additional WV locations. Harvest Care Medical — the operator behind the Country Grown retail brand — operates Huntington-area locations and is the largest WV-based vertically-integrated cannabis operator. A Huntington patient seeking medical cannabis can choose among Trulieve, Coastal Retail (Curaleaf), and Country Grown (Harvest Care) within the city’s footprint. See Country Grown page; see WV operators page.

The Cabell County Recovery Story

Cabell County’s overdose mortality has fallen dramatically from its 2017 peak of 156.6 per 100,000. By 2024, the rate had fallen substantially as part of West Virginia’s state-leading 46% year-over-year decline. The Cabell-Huntington Health Department’s syringe-service program, the Cabell County drug court, the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine substance-use-disorder clinic, and the harm-reduction infrastructure built during Williams’s tenure are credited with much of the improvement. The 2016 cluster has now been followed by nearly a decade of investment in response capacity. See 2024 inflection page.

The August 15 Anniversary in West Virginia Discourse

The August 15 anniversary is an annual reference point in Mountain State cannabis and opioid-policy discourse. Reform advocates cite it when arguing for harm-reduction expansion and for medical-cannabis qualifying-condition broadening (particularly the addition of opioid-use-disorder as a qualifying condition, a reform pursued in multiple sessions but not yet enacted). Anti-reform voices, including Gov. Morrisey’s, cite it to argue that West Virginia must not introduce additional drug-supply pathways. The same date supports both arguments — the cluster as evidence that the state’s drug-supply problem is severe and demands multi-modal response, or as evidence that the state must not add to its drug exposure. See cannabis-as-alternative page.

Cannabis Reality — The Huntington Snapshot

• August 15, 2016 — 28 overdoses in four hours in Huntington; fentanyl-contaminated heroin
• Mayor Steve Williams (D) — harm-reduction mayor, sued opioid manufacturers, lost 2024 gubernatorial race to Morrisey
• Trulieve — 100,000-sq-ft cultivation/processing campus in Huntington, the largest WV cannabis-industrial footprint
• Coastal Retail (Curaleaf-affiliated) and Country Grown (Harvest Care) — additional Huntington dispensary operators
• 156.6 per 100,000 — Cabell County’s 2017 overdose death rate, the WV peak
• Cabell-Huntington Health Department SSP, drug court, MUSOM — the response infrastructure that drove 2024 recovery