West Virginia Fusion Center tells Senate committee out-of-state distributors, fentanyl and xylazine drive rising drug harms

At a meeting of the West Virginia Senate Health Committee, Jack Lucart, director of the West Virginia Fusion Center, presented data showing that most drugs seized in the state originate out of state and that fentanyl, methamphetamine and the cutting agent xylazine are driving recent increases in overdose risk.

Lucart said the fusion center’s narcotics intelligence unit focuses on arrests of non‑West Virginia residents to identify which cities and organizations are “targeting our state.” He said the center compiles seizure and arrest records, shares reports with the Drug Enforcement Administration and local task forces, and can produce a dashboard showing source states and source cities and where seized drugs are distributed within West Virginia. “West Virginia is not a supply state. It’s not a source state for drugs. We are a consumer state,” Lucart told the committee.

The nut of the presentation was that aggregated, out‑of‑state seizure data can let prosecutors and local law enforcement combine separate arrests into larger trafficking or conspiracy cases instead of prosecuting many lower‑level arrests individually. Lucart urged lawmakers to focus enforcement on distributors who “target our state” and to avoid policies that primarily punish people with addiction.

Lucart gave several statistics from the center’s unclassified, high‑level reporting. He said there were 609 total out‑of‑state drug arrests in 2024 and that 32% of those arrests included fentanyl, 33% included…