WEST VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE
2025 REGULAR SESSION
Introduced
House Bill 3406
By Delegate Williams
[Introduced March 17, 2025; referred to the Committee on Finance]
A BILL to amend the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended, by adding thereto a new article, designated §11-29-1, relating to collecting a tax from all manufacturers and distributors of opioid drugs and their derivatives and substances included as Schedule II drugs in this state collected by pharmacies to fund drug addiction and prevention programs.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
## ARTICLE 29. EXCISE TAX ON SCHEDULE II DRUGS TO DRUG ABUSE.
There is hereby imposed an excise tax on pills purchased by or for any licensed pharmacy in this state for all opioid substances and their derivatives, and opioid drugs included in Schedule II, as defined in §60A-2-206 of this code. The excise tax shall be 1 cent multiplied by the number of overdose deaths in West Virginia published for the most recent year available by the Department of Health's Epidemiology Division. The Department of Health shall provide the most recent years data on or before December 1st of each year and the Tax Commission shall determine the amount of tax and notify each pharmacy in the state the appropriate amount of tax to assess of one cent per state drug overdose death on each 100 pills sold, effective each January 1st of each year. The tax is imposed on every pharmaceutical manufacturer or distributor selling Schedule II drugs to licensed pharmacies in this state. The pharmacies licensed and doing business in the State of West Virginia shall collect and remit the tax to the Tax Commissioner. No pharmaceutical manufacturer, distributor or pharmacy may pass on as a cost or otherwise collect this excise tax from the patient. Each pharmacy shall periodically remit the tax collected to the Tax Commissioner pursuant to legislative or interpretative rules promulgated for the collection of this tax by the commissioner, pursuant to §29A-3-1 et seq. of this code, to be deposited by the commissioner upon collection into the Ryan Brown Addiction Prevention and Recovery Fund established pursuant to §16-53-2 of this code.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to collect a state excise tax against opioid sales calculated at one cent for 100 pills multiplied by the number of overdose deaths in the most recent year based on Health Department's death certificates. The tax shall be used to fund addiction prevention and recovery from opioid use.
Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from a heading or the present law and underscoring indicates new language that would be added.