This Virginia county slashed its overdose deaths in half. The formula? Making recovery a community affair.⁠ ⁠ Chesterfield County Sheriff Karl Leonard, pictured here, once thought his job was to keep drugs out of the jail. But that started to change in 2016, when he saw an increase in incarcerated people with addiction problems.⁠ ⁠ The jail had no way to treat them, and inmates would end up getting released back into the community. They would use, overdose and die. “I realized I was part of the problem,” Leonard said. ⁠ ⁠ He googled “addiction treatment” and found John Shinholser, an ex-Marine who runs a recovery center 45 minutes from the jail. Leonard asked how he could get a treatment program at his jail. “If you’re serious, you’ll be in my office in an hour,” Shinholser said and hung up.⁠ ⁠ Leonard got in his cruiser and sped to Shinholser’s office. Shinholser rattled off all the things he thought Leonard could be doing at the jail. Leonard stopped him. “If you’re serious, you’ll be at my jail in an hour,” Leonard said and left. They started “Helping Addicts Recover Progressively,” or HARP that evening.⁠ ⁠ Overdose deaths in the county have dropped by half in a single year—about double the decline of the rest of the country—to levels seen before the crisis began in 2015.⁠ ⁠ The precipitous drops have astounded public officials and health-policy experts, who have traveled across the country in an attempt to learn the formula and replicate it. Governors, members of Congress and sheriffs from as far away as Alaska have all come through, along with an acting U.S. drug czar.⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: Alyssa Schukar for @wsjphotos