Daniel Cameron claims sole credit for Kentucky’s $900M opioid settlements. Is he right?

Who gets the credit for a lawsuit, the man who files it and starts building the evidence or the man who settles it and collects the cash?

In 2021 and 2022, national settlements worth billions of dollars were reached in a collection of addiction-related suits between the states and a number of opioid manufacturers and distributors, including Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health, McKesson, Johnson & Johnson, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and Teva/Allergan.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican elected in 2019, announced that Kentucky stood to collect $842 million from its share of the national opioid litigation. That sum since has risen to about $900 million.

Kentucky’s money is being divided between the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, to help the state plan its future addiction treatment and recovery efforts, and grants to help local governments with their own similar efforts.

Cameron, now the GOP nominee for Kentucky governor, claims sole credit for the money.

And he’s using those claims to attack his opponent, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who served as attorney general before him.

“We’re in the process of bringing nearly $900 million into the state. Andy Beshear, when he was attorney general, didn’t bring any money into the state,” Cameron told reporters in April. “So this has been about not just talking, again, but taking action so that we can hopefully start to have meaningful change in Kentucky.”

In a tweet in June, Cameron wrote: “Andy Beshear filed a lot of lawsuits during his time in office, but in this race, there is only one person who has actually delivered dollars to fight the opioid epidemic, and it’s not him.”

“Compare our records,” Cameron continued. “Beshear: $0. Cameron: $900 million.”

However, it was Beshear who brought the opioid litigation during his four-year term as attorney general. Beshear’s office filed at least nine addiction-related lawsuits against companies by 2018, and it fought to keep them moving in the state courts despite the companies’ efforts to have them dismissed.

“I’m a little shocked that the attorney general would say I haven’t brought any dollars in opioid settlements,” Beshear said at a news conference in April, when asked about Cameron’s claims.

“Every single lawsuit he’s settling right now, I not only filed but I argued personally in court, showing up when companies were trying to blame us for the millions of pills that they sent, hundreds of thousands, and into really small communities,” Beshear said.

“Listen, as an attorney, you’re always supposed to share credit with other lawyers on the suit on a lawsuit, especially the ones who filed it,” he said.

In a written statement to the Herald-Leader on Friday, the Cameron campaign said his claim to credit about the money is “factually correct.”

“He is the only candidate in the race who has delivered millions of dollars as a result of opioid settlements,” campaign spokeswoman Courtney Norris said.

”He is also the only candidate in the race who worked with the General Assembly to create a structure to actually distribute the funds,” Norris said. “AG Cameron’s office worked with the General Assembly on House Bill 427, which created the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission. Andy Beshear didn’t.”