CHARLESTON — Leaders in the West Virginia Legislature made mention Tuesday of addressing the state’s addiction crisis, a subject that hadn’t been listed as a priority during an event focused on the legislative agenda last week.

During a press conference Tuesday at the West Virginia Capitol, State Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, said lawmakers plan to address the drug crisis this legislative session through criminal justice. The Legislature has strengthened penalties in several areas related to drug dealing in recent years.

Carmichael is also pushing a bill to offer tuition assistance for students who want to attend community college or technical school.

“We want to help them transition to being productive citizens and help them off this crisis that they’re currently encountering and we want to make West Virginia the worst place in the world to deal with drugs, so we’ll focus very hard on that,” he said.

Members of Republican leadership held a press conference to Tuesday to announce legislative priorities before the legislative session, which begins Wednesday.

Speaker of the House Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, also mentioned the drug crisis.

“We also want to address the drug problem in a variety of ways,” he said. “We want to not only focus on law enforcement, as we’ve done in prior years, but we want to make sure that folks who have done their time, paid their penalty, and paid their debt to society are able to re-enter the workforce.”

Hanshaw said lawmakers want to expand the Second Chance for Employment Act. That bill passed in 2017 and was meant to help those in recovery convicted of nonviolent crimes re-enter society.

The bill received criticism at the time because the compromised version did not expunge records for certain nonviolent offenders; rather, it reduced felonies to misdemeanors after 10 years. Members of the recovery community also said that 10 years was too long, and people would lose hope.

No specific mention was made of drug abuse treatment or access to health care, although lawmakers did mention a foster care bill which could potentially address childhood trauma, a risk factor for addiction.

West Virginia leads the nation in overdose deaths and surpassed 1,000 overdose deaths in 2018.

Also at the press conference, lawmakers also said they plan to give teachers and other public employees a raise; look at improvements to secondary roads; allow for charter schools; eliminate taxes on social security income; roll back the business inventory and equipment tax; and improve broadband connectivity.