By Steven Allen Adams for The Intelligencer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – West Virginia’s sixth drug czar in seven years will be a nationally renowned doctor and addiction medical specialist who was portrayed in a streaming miniseries about the opioid crisis.
During his weekly administration briefing Wednesday, Gov. Jim Justice said that Dr. Stephen Loyd, the chief medical officer for Cedar Recovery in Tennessee, will be West Virginia’s new permanent director of the Office of Drug Control Policy (ODCP) effective Monday, Aug. 12.
“Today, I am announcing the appointment of Dr. Stephen Loyd,” Justice said. “Many of you probably know Stephen Loyd. I think he is an incredible man and he is going to be the director of our Office of Drug Control Policy. I think you’ll find he brings a lot of experience and a lot of stuff to the table.”
Loyd, an internal medicine and addiction medicine physician, has been the chief medical officer for Cedar Recovery since 2018. He is also the vice president of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners and served from 2015 to 2018 as the drug czar for the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.
In recovery from his own addictions to opioids and benzodiazepine since 2004, Loyd’s life story became the inspiration for actor Michael Keaton’s role in the Hulu miniseries “Dopesick,” a fictional account of the opioid crisis told from the perspective of those with substance use disorder, the doctors and health professionals, and the companies who marketed and distributed prescription opioids.
