For many people who use drugs, especially in rural states, harm reduction programs function as their only lifeline. Pharmacies refuse to sell syringes. Emergency departments send them home with little more than a brochure of phone numbers. Abandoned by mainstream health care institutions, syringe service programs keep them connected not only to health care, but to kind and caring people. But that connection has been severed in West Virginia by a state law passed in April 2021. [...]