NC Attorney General Praises Opioid Settlement

This article first appeared in The Pilot on March, 18, 2022.

Moore County is getting a lot of money to help fight the opioid crisis, which has intensified during the pandemic.

“This crisis is raging worse than ever,” North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein told The Pilot in an interview Thursday. Stein, who made a couple of stops in Moore County, has been working on combating the public health crisis since he was first elected back in 2016.

“And so the work that we have been doing for years, leading a national coalition of bipartisan attorneys general — Tennessee was the other co-lead — to hold accountable the drug companies that made billions of dollars while millions of Americans got hooked on those pills,” Stein said, “it's become even more pressing, because of the tragic situation we find ourselves in.”

On Feb. 25, Stein announced that a $26 billion national opioid settlement with drugmakers had been finalized. The settlement with the nation’s three major pharmaceutical distributors — Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen — and Johnson & Johnson would award $750 million to North Carolina.

Stein said that Moore County could expect to get around $6 million from the settlement, with the first payment coming in this summer. He said the funding is “enough to make some critical investments” in response to the opioid epidemic.

“I hope it's not the final size of the pot, but it's all about ensuring that those funds are well utilized to address the crisis and save lives,” Stein said.

Wayne Vest, county manager, said the county will be able to put the money to good use to fight the opioid epidemic, as well as substance abuse more generally.

“We’re already aware of several options and already have partnerships and relationships that have been working in the past to try to address substance abuse within this county,” Vest said. “These dollars will help us strengthen those partnerships fiscally and maybe take on some new partnerships.”

The opioid crisis, which has been going on for “well over a decade,” has been worsened by the tumultuous circumstances of the pandemic and the mental health challenges it’s presented, Stein said. In 2018, the state of North Carolina saw a decline in opioid overdose deaths for the first time in two decades, with similarly low levels in 2019.

“It was the first time in years that we sort of bent the curve,” Stein said, “and then COVID hit, and all of those gains just blew away.”

According to data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, the state recorded 2,301 overdose deaths in 2018 and 2,352 in 2019. However, in 2020, the deaths increased to 3,118 and went up again in 2021, though an exact number is not yet available. Stein said early records from this year don’t look promising, with more deaths recorded this February than February 2021.

Moore County has seen a similar upward trend. According to data from NCDHHS, in 2018, the county recorded seven opioid related deaths. But even before the pandemic, the number skyrocketed: in 2019 there were 21 deaths from opioid overdose. That number increased slightly in 2020 with 23 deaths recorded. Figures for 2021 are not yet fully available, but the number is expected to be higher than the prior year.

Stein said that 85 percent of the money from the settlement is going to local governments. He said there will be guidance for how counties and larger municipalities can use those funds, with anything from detox programs to recovery services to improving harm reduction strategies for post-overdose response teams.

“Depending on what the needs of each county or community is, they can use the funds accordingly,” Stein said.

Overall, Stein is hopeful that the settlement will bring much-needed relief to those suffering from opioid addiction across the state.

“I’m tremendously excited about the potential to have this be a turning point, so that we can drive the opioid death rate back down,” Stein said. “And what I do know is that I'm certain there will be people alive and healthy next year who otherwise would have died if we didn't get these resources into communities.”