Craven County Gets $15M From State Opioid Settlement

Introduction

At the Riverfront Convention Centre, the Craven County Board of Commissioners conducted a special meeting to discuss the opioid settlement funds and Memorandum of Agreement (MOA).

The MOA mandates a single yearly meeting at which all towns must be present in order to offer feedback on potential uses for the cash from the opioid settlement, according to the director of Craven County Human Resources. Officials looked at some of the opioid statistics relating to overdose, overdose mortality, and emergency department/EMS data in Craven County after the director stated that the county had an overview of the opioid crisis data collection.

The Craven County Opioid Task Force has been renamed Craven County Opioid Epidemic Response, the director of the group said during the meeting. She claims that when commissioners became aware of the county's opioid problem for the first time in 2017, they assembled local residents to create an opioid task group. The task force was provided funding for community engagement so that it could focus primarily on initiatives for enforcement, prevention, and education. The program has been allowed to grow now that Craven County will receive money from the opioid settlement.

The director also went through the MOA agreement and all of the options that are given for counties to pick from. She stated that we must abide by the MOA, which precisely outlines the choices counties and municipalities can select from, in order to spend those settlement payments.

The solutions offered by Option A comprise things like recovery support programs, evidence-based addiction therapy, naloxone distribution, syringe service programs, addiction treatment for people who are incarcerated, and more.

The director states that before implementing the actions under option B, the Craven County Opioid Epidemic Response Team must first go through a 14-step strategic planning process. They haven't finished it yet, so they're currently concentrating more on option A's tactics.

North Carolina has seen enormous and ongoing destruction as a result of the opioid crisis. More than 300 opioid overdoses were recorded in Craven County in 2022, which also had the second-highest incidence of opioid overdose emergency department visits in the state of North Carolina.

Several counties and towns filed lawsuits to hold various businesses responsible for their role in the production, promotion, and distribution of prescription opioid medicines, according to an executive summary by the NCACC on the opioid litigation settlement.

According to the NCACC executive summary, the federal cases, which comprise around 3,000 claims from almost every state, have been merged into Multi-District Litigation (MDL).

According to the NCACC, settlement funds were distributed among the states depending on the population and local effect of the opioid crisis as established by public health statistics.

The Community Opioid Resources Engine for North Carolina (CORE-NC) estimates that from 2022 through 2038, county and municipal governments in the state would receive more than $1 billion, or more precisely, $1,163,742,414. According to CORE-NC, Craven County will receive $15.5 million in total over the course of 18 years.

Craven received $1,116,187 in opioid settlement monies last year, and $2,127,574 will be distributed to it for the fiscal year 2023–2024. The NCACC claims that while pharmaceutical distribution businesses failed to keep an eye on suspicious purchases of prescription opioids, opioid manufacturers downplayed the consequences of long-term opioid usage for those with chronic pain.

According to the NCACC, four businesses—Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson—have declared their readiness to settle all pending legal claims against them for a total of $26 billion.

The director claims that as a result of the settlements and bankruptcies, a total of $47 billion was obtained nationally. $26 billion was raised in the first wave in 2021, and $21 billion in the second wave in 2022.

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