Only a sliver of Oklahoma's $270 million settlement with OxyContin's maker is earmarked for local governments that have been hit hard financially by the opioid crisis.
By JULIE CARR SMYTH and GEOFF MULVIHILLFILE - In this Nov. 2, 2017, file photo, Cincinnati Fire Department medics nasally administer naloxone to a woman while responding to a possible overdose report at a gas station in downtown Cincinnati. As the nation’s opioid crisis has devastated thousands of families, it also has taken a crippling financial toll on cities, small towns and counties around the country.
Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer representing at least five Oklahoma counties in opioid-related lawsuits, said he expects his clients will avoid asking for a piece of the settlement because taking the money would mean giving up on their own claims against Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma.Most of the $270 million Oklahoma settlement — about $200 million — announced Tuesday will fund a university drug treatment and research center.
Summit County, home to Akron, saw a 43 percent increase in public safety and criminal justice spending for opiate-related cases between 2013 and 2016 — from $15.5 million to $22.3 million, its analysis found. In Ohio’s Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, combined annual spending for its coroner, sheriff, public defender, juvenile court and heroin coalition rose by $13.5 million between 2014 and 2018.
“A single drug overdose will necessitate the response of two police officers, probably three EMS folks, three vehicles, and that’s on top of the time and equipment,” said Jay McDonald, president of the 25,000-member Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio. “And in towns like Marion, those happen three or four times a day. And those aren’t fatal overdoses, those are just overdoses.”
A White House Council of Economic Advisers report from 2017 put the cost of the opioid crisis between $290 billion to $622 billion in 2015 alone. Excluding the economic toll associated with deaths, the analysis found a nationwide cost of $72 billion for that year.
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