Robbinsville – Graham County stands to get more than $1.18 million from a $750 million settlement with pharmaceutical companies, stemming from the ongoing opioid epidemic.
Graham County will receive this funding over an 18-year period as per the terms of the National Opioid settlement, Graham County Finance Director Becky Garland told The Graham Star.
“I worked on the North Carolina opioid settlement committee as led by the NCACC (North Carolina Association of County Commissioners),” Garland said. “In the course of the settlement negotiations with the National Committee, as well as the N.C. Attorney General’s office, we agreed upon specific measures to ensure that the settlement money be used for addressing the epidemic, which includes the use of a local committee which will determine the highest and best use of the funds.
“Broadly, however, the funds must be used for evidence-based strategies to address the epidemic.”
North Carolina counties have two options when deciding how to disburse the settlement money:
* Under Option A, a local government may fund one or more strategies from a shorter list of evidence-based, high-impact strategies to address the epidemic, including evidence-based addiction treatment, recovery support services, and collaborative strategic planning.
* Under Option B, a local government engages in a collaborative strategic planning process involving “a diverse array of stakeholders and may then fund a strategy from the Option A list or a longer list of strategies included in the national settlements.”
More information is available at ncopioidsettlement.org/resources.
The North Carolina settlement is the second-largest attorney-general settlement in history between the states and pharmaceutical companies that had a large hand in starting the epidemic.
According to published reports, the agreement between N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein and the N.C. Association of County Commissioners on allocating the money, the bulk of it (85 percent) will go to the counties and municipalities to be spent according to guidelines and oversight from the state. The remaining 15 percent will be allocated by the General Assembly.
The companies that signed on to the agreement – McKesson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and Janssen Pharmaceuticals (owned by Johnson & Johnson) – will pay the money out over 18 years, but largely front-loaded to the first three years.