Principal Mary Ann Hale dreads weekends.
By the time Fridays roll around, 74-year-old Hale, a principal at West Elementary School in McArthur, Ohio, is overcome with worry, wondering whether her students will survive the couple of days away from school.
Too many children in this part of Ohio's Appalachian country live in unstable homes with a parent facing addiction. For years, the community has struggled with opioids. Ohio had the second-highest number of drug overdose deaths per capita in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But in McArthur, a close-knit village of about 2,000 in rural Vinton County, there has been a significant shift in recent months.
"They've moved on from the oxycodone and OxyContin," says Hale. "Right now, the biggest problem is meth."
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04.26.2025