The Commonwealth of Kentucky ranked 12th out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia in a study from WalletHub, using a variety of metrics to rank each state.
The total score for Kentucky, which was accumulated through a mixture of three criteria: drug use and addiction rank, law enforcement rank, and drug health issues and rehab rank, tallied up to an even 50.00, with the highest score on the list coming from New Mexico at 69.89.
Kentucky ranked eighth in the country for drug use and addiction rank, which looked at factors such as overdose deaths per capita, overdose deaths growth year over year, number of opioid pain reliever prescriptions per 100 people and others.
Kentucky also ranked eighth in the country for law enforcement rank, which factored in drug arrests on college campuses per 1,000 students, maternity drug policies in each state, states with employee drug testing laws and drug arrests per capita.
However, Kentucky ranked 50th in the country for drug health issues and rehab, which meant the state had the most support for those going through drug addiction through metrics like share of adults who couldn’t get treatment for illicit drug use in the past year, substances abuse treatment facilities per 100,000 people using drugs and many other factors.
This article appears in Apr 24 – May 7, 2024.
