ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Opioid manufacturers and distributors are paying more than $54 billion in restitution to settle lawsuits about their role in the overdose epidemic with a significant amount to individual states.
Up until recently, data wasn't available to determine how the money being allocated, and spent by the local governments to receive it.
"The data that was available were from Attorney General Press releases in each state that said the settlements were going to get paid out over a varying number of years and this is the total amount the state will receive," said Aneri Pattani, Senior Correspondent at KFF Health News who been reporting on the opioid settlement funds for over 1.5 years on Total Information A.M. "What wasn't available was local government, meaning county and cites, who in most states are receiving and controlling a good amount of this story, but if you wanted to find out, you would have to go individually asking them one-by-one."
Over 4,000 entities sued, from city, county, state governments and tribal nations sued opioid companies with settlements reached back in 2022. $54 billion of it goes to all 50 states, while tribal nations have their own settlement. Pattani says most of use of the opioid settlement is being used broadly for "opioid remediation."
"It means 'how do we address the opioid overdose crisis' and that can mean investing in treatment, prevention, harm reduction, recovery, a bunch of different avenues," said Pattani. "There's a suggested list in several of the documents with over 100 potential uses, but governments are able to do things not on that list as well, with the idea being it being used for opioid remediation."
So far, Missouri has received about nearly $88.6 million, with $379 million more expected to come. Illinois has received over $203 million so far, with about $572 million still to come.
Ultimately, whether the money is being used well to combat the opioid crisis is still to be determined, but Pattani says there is tons of conversation of the use of the money, with answers still to be determined on if the money is being used right, but questions starting to be considered.
"Right now, a lot of county governments, state governments, with some states setting up counsels that decide how the spend the money, are starting to think about 'how do we know if that was effective?' two years into giving away the money," said Pattani. "If the payments are continuing to be paid until 2038, do they give the same people money in Year 5 that they awarded in year 1? If so, what is the data that showed they deserve more funding?"