West Virginia Drug Czar Resigns, Leaving Opioid Post Vacant

Dr. Stephen Loyd, who has directed West Virginia's Office of Drug Control Policy since August 2024, confirmed Tuesday that he left the job earlier this month, ending a tenure in which he reported a steep decline in overdose deaths and leaving the state with the nation's highest fatal overdose rate without its top addiction policy official. He was the eighth person to hold the position since the legislature created it in April 2017.

"I'm heartbroken," Loyd told West Virginia Watch. Gov. Patrick Morrisey said through a spokesperson, "We wish Dr. Loyd well and thank him for his service and many contributions to the Mountain State." Loyd said he is now working with the Trump administration on the Great American Recovery Initiative, the program established by executive order and led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House addiction recovery adviser Kathryn Burgum.

A reporting line, not a policy fight

In his account of the exit, Loyd placed the cause in the chain of command rather than in any dispute over strategy. After Carl Ayers was appointed Human Services secretary in July, Loyd said he was required to report to Ayers, even though state code provides that the director of drug control policy answers directly to the governor.

"I would have never taken a job to come to report to somebody else," he said, adding that he holds no ill will toward Ayers. Loyd also said that across a year and a half in the Morrisey administration he never spoke with the governor beyond a text message around the time he resigned. "I don't have any idea what the policy of the administration was," he said. "I tried to find out."

Loyd came to the post with an unusual résumé for a state administrator: an internal medicine and addiction medicine physician who has been in recovery from opioid and benzodiazepine addiction for more than two decades and whose story inspired Michael Keaton's character in the Hulu series "Dopesick." Before West Virginia, he served as chief medical officer at Cedar Recovery in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, chaired that state's Opioid Abatement Council and held Tennessee's own drug policy post.

Lawmakers call the departure a loss

Sen. Tom Takubo, a Kanawha County Republican and physician, described the resignation as "devastating" and questioned whether the administration had prioritized the epidemic. "I am concerned that this was a preventable exit," Takubo said. "My concern is that there wasn't enough focus from the administration as to how important the substance abuse and drug epidemic is in West Virginia and the incredible work that Dr. Loyd was performing."

Takubo said neighboring Appalachian states leaned on Loyd for guidance and that he had accompanied him to meetings in Washington with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. "He brought an incredible amount of expertise, experience and leadership to the state of West Virginia, which is going to create a massive void in his absence," he said.

The departure is one of several from Morrisey's cabinet this year. Tourism Secretary Chelsea Ruby resigned in July after five years in the role, and Human Services Secretary Alex Mayer left earlier in the year after roughly a year on the job. The drug control policy position itself sat without a permanent director for more than a year before Loyd was named in July 2024, and it has now changed hands eight times since 2017.

What the office was showing before he left

Last month Loyd briefed lawmakers on a 41.6 percent decline in overdose deaths from pre-pandemic levels, an improvement he credited to a set of overdose response policies and widespread distribution of naloxone, the medication that reverses opioid overdoses. West Virginia still records the highest overdose death rate in the country, and the state's trajectory has drawn national attention as a test case for whether broad naloxone access and post-overdose outreach can hold a decline in place — a question covered in earlier reporting on the state's falling death toll.

Loyd leaves as the federal government is pressing states to adopt what the administration calls a Treatment First model, with money routed through block grant supplements and recovery housing standards set at the national level. Loyd framed his move as a continuation rather than an exit from that work. "There's so much of what we've done in West Virginia by the folks that I just mentioned that I think are scalable, I think that other states can benefit from," he said. "I'm not leaving my folks behind."

No successor has been announced. In the interim, the office operates inside the Department of Human Services, the same reporting arrangement Loyd said he was unwilling to accept — leaving the state's addiction policy apparatus without a director as the administration it answers to reshapes federal recovery funding.