New state drug czar named after WV agency goes more than a year without permanent director

The West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. (Perry Bennett | West Virginia Legislative Photography)

A new leader is coming to the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy , ending the agency’s year-and-a-half run without a permanent director, according to Gov. Jim Justice.

Dr. Stephen Loyd, an internal medicine and addiction medicine physician in Tennessee, will take over the office starting Aug. 12, Justice announced Wednesday during his weekly press briefing.

Loyd, who holds a medical degree from East Tennessee State University, previously worked as the chief medical officer at Cedar Recovery in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. He also sat as chair of the state’s Opioid Abatement Council. Before that, he served as Tennessee’s top drug policy expert, holding the position of opioid czar for the state’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Use for about two years.

“I am deeply honored to join the Office of Drug Control Policy,” Loyd said in a news release Wednesday. “Together, we will continue to advance data-driven, comprehensive strategies to combat substance abuse and improve the lives of West Virginians.”

The inspiration for Michael Keaton’s character in the Hulu limited series “Dopesick” (based on the 2018 book of the same name by journalist Beth Macy), Loyd is in long term recovery from opioid and benzodiazepine addiction. According to his biography at Cedar Recovery, he has not used the drugs since 2004 and his personal experiences with substance use disorder serve as a “driving force” behind his policy and medical work.

In media interviews over the past several years, Loyd has been a vocal proponent for harm reduction services and has said they are crucial to saving lives and preventing the worst consequences of active addiction.

Loyd recently worked as a voluntary co-chair of The Helios Alliance , an Alabama-based organization that is using “innovative, transformative [and] evidence-based technologies” to confront the opioid epidemic while educating the public on interventions. He is not currently listed on the organization’s website as a co-chair and it’s unclear when he left that position.

As part of that work, Loyd has advocated for a data-driven approach to drug policy and funding. In March, he told KFF Health News that he believes statistical modeling and artificial intelligence can be used to create a simulation of the opioid crisis that could predict what kinds of programs would be most effective at saving lives. That modeling, he said, can help direct local officials on how to best invest money they receive through opioid settlement funds.

It’s unclear where the efforts to create this modeling — which would have cost about $1.5 million for Alabama — currently stands. According to KFF, the Helios Alliance was also “in discussions” with leaders in Tennessee and West Virginia to create simulations.

According to a post on the Helios Alliance’s LinkedIn, representatives from the alliance traveled to the West Virginia State Capitol earlier this year to meet with state leaders, including Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, Sen. Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier, and Jeremiah Samples, the former deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Resources.

Turnover at the ODCP

The West Virginia Legislature passed legislation in April 2017 to create the state’s ODCP, which is responsible for developing and implementing drug policies, collecting and analyzing data related to addiction and drug use and advising lawmakers on best-practices.

Loyd will be at least the eighth person in about seven years to head the ODCP.

Its first few years as an agency were marked by high turnover in leadership.

The first director, former Huntington police chief Jim Johnson, served in the role for about five months before retiring in January 2018. He was succeeded by Dr. Michael Brumage, former head of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, who held the position for less than two months.

Following Brumage’s leave , the agency went without a permanent director for about eight months. Over that time, recovery specialist Susie Mullens and Nancy Sullivan, the special assistant to then-Department of Health and Human Resources Secretary Bill Crouch, each worked a few months as interim directors.

In December 2018, Bob Hansen accepted the role as ODCP director. He retired in October 2020 after giving nearly two years to the office.

He was followed by Dr. Matthew Christiansen, who served as the ODCP head for about two years — from October 2020 to January 2023 — before he left to work as the state health officer, a position he still holds today.

Since January 2023, Rachel Thaxton, the ODCP assistant director, and Christina Mullins, the Department of Human Services Deputy Secretary of Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders, have been leading the agency.

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