Pike County

And how did you guess Joe's Drive-In Chicken?

Well, we was, uh, coming from Pike County listening, and me and my buddy was talking that, uh, we was hoping Letcher County would get picked.

And, uh, we was actually just 30 seconds from here, and we said either he'll pick Pine Mountain Grill-

Oh, no

...with the scale of death being the most terminal measurable outcome, but the generational devastation which has surrounded each of those deaths being a profound marker on contemporary American society.

That opioid epidemic began in Pike County, Kentucky, which is my ances- the home of my ancestors' family.

And as, um, a state official in Kentucky, I was recruited to run Kentucky's Opioid Commission, which had as its job the distribution of almost a billion dollars in settlement funds from opioid manufacturers and distributors, uh, in which Purdue Pharma was not included, by the way, um, to try to solve the opioid epidemic here at home.

And, uh, because I had become a believer in plant medicine at the time I was recruited to do this job and was very much a, a silent believer, [chuckles] the office in which I worked was a deeply, uh, conservative Republican law and order drug warrior, uh, kind of folks.

So that's specifically for those 12 most eastern counties.

So Pike County is an example of a county.

So we're trying to address the child care, housing, and transportation, but also just finding people that want to give back to their community with their business.

So that's the first avenue.