In 2017, as Ohio Attorney General, now Gov. Mike DeWine was one of the first in the nation to sue opioid makers and drug distributors for their role in flooding the market with massive amounts of highly addictive opioids.
The latest nationwide settlement was $7.4 billion with Purdue Pharma, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost recently announced Ohio will receive roughly $198 million over 15 years to support addiction treatment and prevention.
“This is another major step toward accountability and recovery,” Yost said. “The money won’t undo the damage, but it will help communities in Ohio and elsewhere continue to address and overcome the unspeakable harm.”
The settlement is subject to U.S. Bankruptcy Court approval — individual payouts are unknown at this juncture — and Butler County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Gerrity told the Journal-News the “deadline for approval is Sept. 30 but that can always be delayed for any number of reasons.”
Over the years the commissioners have discussed spending some of the money on the now defunct plan to create an emergency mental health crisis center and the latest idea is to invest it in the ongoing work with the homeless problem in the county.
County Administrator Judi Boyko said “settlement funds cannot be used solely for housing, but if the board of commissioners wants to develop a program that has wrap around services, accommodations for treatment that has a housing component, that’s different.”
The first settlement payout came in July 2022 and it was part of Yost’s OneOhio settlement with the major distributors. It stemmed from investigations by Yost and other state attorneys general into whether the three distributors fulfilled their legal duty to refuse to ship opioids to pharmacies that submitted suspicious drug orders.
He negotiated on behalf of all the governmental jurisdictions in the state including counties, cities and others. Most Butler County jurisdictions signed onto the settlement. There has been a tandem multidistrict litigation going through the federal district court in Cleveland.
Nearly every community countywide joined most of the lawsuits and thus far have collected $7.18 million and spent $966,857. The biggest cities Hamilton and Middletown have collected $918,001 and $758,280 respectively.
Hamilton spent $305,306 to buy an ambulance, according to City Manager Craig Bucheit. He didn’t say what else the city intends to do with the money that will continue to come into city coffers.
Middletown City Manager Ashley Combs said her city has spent $29,162 on an agreement with OneCity for Recovery over 2024 and so far this year. Also budgeted is $489,635 for Health Department salaries related to Opioid & Harm Reduction, police opioid related expenses, the Opioid Treatment Court and more money for OneCity.
Nearly 4,000 jurisdictions nationwide filed lawsuits in state and federal courts years ago —the county commissioners were among them — when the heroin epidemic was killing their residents, and budgets trying to deal with the pervasive problem.
Overdose deaths in the county peaked in 2017 at 232 and have gradually decreased to 88 last year and 52 for the first six months of this year. The county coroner’s office said there were 54 overdoses by this time last year.
West Chester Twp. has received $443,332 in opioid settlement funds and spent $26,713 on behavioral health services for first responders and others.
Trenton has collected $51,303 thus far and Finance Director Matthew Mesisklis said they will receive annual distributions until 2038 totaling $128,674 from various settlements.
“With such a relatively small annual distribution, out of our total annual budget of $5.9 million for Police/Fire/EMS/Dispatch, we do not have any specific funding allocation for the distributions,” he said. “We allocate the costs to salaries and standard drug bag supplies.”
Fairfield Twp. has chosen a unique use for some of the $112,411 they’ve gotten so far. Fire Inspector Jordan Peters said they purchased a couple remote control police and fire vehicles they use for outreach with kids, that includes talking about drugs.
The township has spent $49,238 and that also includes $20,000 for the Fairfield City Schools’ Fairfield Coalition for Drug Prevention.
Oxford Twp. is donating some of its $131,165 to the Butler County Health Department for a new van and Ross Twp. is financing a new police Flock camera system with some of its money. They have received $26,947.
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