Bill creating monetary reward for those who tip off police on drug activity advances in WV Senate
Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, the lone sponsor of Senate Bill 109, speaks on the Senate floor on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, in Charleston, W.Va. (Will Price | West Virginia Legislative Photography)
The Senate Committee on Substance Use Disorder and Mental Health advanced a bill Wednesday that, if adopted, will incentivize residents to report drug activity to law enforcement with monetary rewards funded by a new excise tax on harm reduction tools.
The excise tax would add one cent to all purchases of naloxone and drug testing strips — two life saving interventions that help prevent fatal overdoses in people who use drugs — in West Virginia. Under a committee substitute adopted by the substance use disorder committee, nonprofits would be exempt from paying the excise tax.
Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, is the lone sponsor of Senate Bill 109, which he named the Neighborhood Assistance and Rejuvenation Compact Act. He said that while he would like to see a permanent, state-backed funding source for the new fund, a tax on naloxone and other overdose mitigation tools was appropriate for the time being. It remained unclear how much money, however, could actually be raised by such a tax since nonprofits largely distribute naloxone free of charge and receive it often through federal and state grant dollars.
Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, said he worried that placing the tax on proven intervention strategies could send the 'wrong message' as the state attempts to target higher level dealers and traffickers instead of low level offenders.
Tarr, however, alleged that drug traffickers have incentive to use and purchase naloxone and testing strips to prove the potency of the drugs they sell.
'The reason that we went after Narcan and test strips was because the people — both traffickers and [drug] users — are the reason we have to do this in the first place,' Tarr said.
Many people who use or overdose on fentanyl are unaware that the drug is present in what they're using and fentanyl test strips, according to experts, allow them to use more safely. Naloxone is an effective opioid overdose reversal drug proven to dramatically lower the risk of fatal overdose, according to countless peer-reviewed studies.
The money raised by the excise tax would be put in a special revenue account overseen by the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Ten percent of anything raised would go to administering the new program while the rest of the money could be used for marketing and payments to people whose tips to police successfully help with getting someone convicted for a drug crime.
The bill tasked the Homeland Security and the police with creating an anonymous tip line that could be used to submit tips. Payments to individuals would only be levied if a tip proves useful in securing a drug conviction against someone. Confidential informants and those who work for law enforcement would not be eligible for the reward.
Marketing for the program, Tarr said, could include buying and posting billboards in areas known to have high drug activity. Those billboards would show mugshots of people convicted of drug crimes and the sentence they received for such crimes in an attempt to deter others from violating the law.
Tarr said his inspiration for the billboards came after watching the news one night and seeing 'bodies hanging off of bridges' in a report on cartels in Mexico. The actions, he said, were meant to show what would happen if someone crossed the cartel.
'That's pretty difficult to fight,' Tarr said. 'It's that kind of intimidation — how do you go and have that kind of intimidation and fight back?'
After speaking to people in law enforcement, he said he learned that it would be helpful if they could find a way to 'put a price on [drug dealers'] heads.' Tarr clarified that he did not mean to kill them, but to show what the price — i.e. prison sentence — would be for dealing and trafficking drugs in the state of West Virginia.
SB 109 passed the Senate Committee on Substance Use Disorder and Mental Health via voice vote. It will now advance to the Senate Finance Committee.
Lawmakers on the committee were also considering a bill Wednesday to prohibit opioid treatment programs in the state of West Virginia. Action, however, was not taken on that bill by publication time.
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