‘Conn. should prioritize saving lives’
$300M in opioid-settlement funds face scrutiny
Connecticut is in line to receive about $300 million from a national settlement of opioid crisis-related claims against four of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Now comes the challenge of distributing that infusion of funds.
With its share of the $26 billion agreement announced this week with distributors Amerisource-Bergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, Connecticut officials say they intend to tackle an unrelenting opioid epidemic.
Advocates for those suffering from addiction say they are hoping that public officials live up to their promises to use the funds to respond to the public health emergency — and not repeat the generic spending of previous corporate settlements.
“The focus should be on evidence-based programs and services for prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery support services,” Courtney Gallo Hunter, vice president of state policy for Norwalk-based nonprofit Shatterproof, which is working to end the addiction crisis in the U.S., told Hearst Connecticut Media. “Connecticut should prioritize saving lives now through reducing harms and ensuring access to evidence-based treatment for addiction.”
Funding to ‘amplify’ state’s response to crisis
Elected officials highlighted the size of the settlement, which comprises a record amount for a payout resulting from opioid-related litigation. It resolves claims from local and state governments across the country that the three distributors and Johnson & Johnson helped fuel the opioid crisis by not responding to warning signs about the overproliferation of addictive pain drugs and misleading patients and doctors about the risk of opioid addiction.
“These new funds can make a huge difference,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who served as state attorney general from 1991 to 2011, told Hearst. “They offer the biggest potential boost to antiaddiction efforts in recent years.”
The settlement is not yet a done deal, but state officials are anticipating that payments could start to be disbursed in the first half of 2022. It will take 18 years to distribute all of the funds.
“Connecticut will see $26 million in each of the first three years,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said Wednesday at a press conference at the state Capitol in Hartford. “And then that number will go up and down by a few million dollars depending on the year.”
About 70 percent of the settlement proceeds will go directly to the states. In Connecticut, state funds will be distributed through an Opioid Recovery and Remediation Fund Advisory Council administered by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
In the current fiscal year,
DMHAS is operating with a $14 million annual budget from a federal grant.
“These resources will help us to amplify Connecticut’s response toward preventing a tragedy of unmitigated addiction and help us recover from the tragic losses our families and communities have faced,” Nancy Navarretta, DMHAS’ acting commissioner, said at the press conference.
Fifteen percent of the funds will go directly to municipalities, and “another 15 percent will be managed by the state for the benefit of victims, families and municipalities broadly,” Tong said.
Mental health and addiction-treatment specialists said that the new funds are desperately needed. Last year, 1,273 people in the state died from opioid-involved overdoses, up 13 percent from 2019, according to the Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
“There’s a long list of initiatives that every single person who sits in a seat like mine has that are shovel-ready — if only we had the dollars to be able to do them,” Maria Coutant Skinner, executive director of the McCall Center for Behavioral Health in Torrington, said at the press conference. “Today, that changes.”
Many family members of those who have struggled with opioid addiction also advocated for more funding for prevention and treatment programs.
“Our family was wrecked,” Manchester resident Paige Niver, whose 26-year-old daughter has been in recovery for the past six years after struggling with opioid addiction as a teenager, said at the press conference. “The great news is that (my daughter) climbed a large mountain, and she’s put herself together. And our family is no longer wrecked because of good treatment and medical care… Addiction is treatable and preventable.”
The new settlement far exceeds the size of previous opioid-related agreements involving Connecticut. Among other pacts, Connecticut announced in February its participation in a 47-state coalition that had reached a $573 million settlement with consulting firm McKinsey & Co., resolving their investigations of the firm’s alleged support of efforts to boost opioid sales of pharmaceutical companies including Stamford-based Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Connecticut is expected to receive about $7.5 million from that agreement.
In 2007, the state received about $700,000 as part of a nearly $20 million settlement that Purdue reached with 26 states. Those funds helped to support the launch of the state’s prescription monitoring program.
Learning from the past
Connecticut and other states have pledged to not divert any of the new settlement funds for programs not focused on the opioid crisis.
“This money, by the terms of the settlement agreement, is directed toward abatement — abating the (opioid) crisis,” Tong said. “It should not be used and will not be used to pave roads.”
Those commitments contrast with the lack of restrictions on the funds generated from states’ 1998 settlement of their lawsuits against major tobacco companies.
For the 2021 fiscal year, states will collect about $27 billion from that settlement and tobacco taxes, according to the nonprofit Campaign for TobaccoFree Kids. But they will spend only about 2 percent on programs to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit, the nonprofit said.
Connecticut has received to date a total of approximately $2.8 billion in tobacco-related payouts, according to the state Attorney’s General Office. The office was not able to immediately provide a summary of the allocation of those funds.
“We relied on the promises that were made by Connecticut legislators and governors that the purposes and spirit of the (tobacco) settlement would be followed,” Blumenthal said. “Our feeling was that money coming to the state of Connecticut as the result of any settlement should be appropriated by the legislature because our constitution requires that it be done that way.
“I tremendously regret and am pretty angry that both Republican and Democratic governors used that money to plug deficits and do other things — some of them very worthwhile — but not to pursue prevention and cessation of tobacco products.”