Milwaukee County received a record $101 million opioid settlement. How will it spend the money?
Milwaukee County now has a whopping $101 million in opioid litigation settlement recovery, after entering into a second settlement agreement with companies providing opioids.
The total settlement is a combination of two settlement agreements, with $72 million agreed to in late 2021 and the new tranche of $56 million. While the settlement dollars total to $128 million, the County receives $101 million after attorney fees.
“These dollars have the potential to be transformative for our community, especially at a time when we’ve seen the opioid problem and the suffering of county residents not just continue but intensify," Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley wrote in a statement. "Milwaukee County is committed to doing all we can to make the best use of these funds and get life-saving resources into the community.”
This new addition makes it is the largest amount recovered for any local government in Wisconsin's history.
How many opioid-related deaths and overdoses have happened in Milwaukee County?
Milwaukee County has faced both sobering and staggering opioid-related numbers in recent months. It was reported every 16 hours someone dies from an overdose in Milwaukee County, with a wave of 17 overdose deaths countywide occurring in a matter of days in early April.
In early 2022, Milwaukee County launched an online dashboard that tracks overdoses, including when and where the overdoses have taken place and demographic information about the people who have overdosed.
The numbers have yet to be finalized for 2022 due to pending cases, but there were 570 confirmed fatal overdoses and 5,586 suspected nonfatal overdoses countywide, according to the data. The dashboard does not show the number of 2022 fatal overdoses broken down by demographic. But for nonfatal overdoses, 2,396 victims were reported as Black, 2,235 as white and 668 as Hispanic.
In 2021, there were a reported 623 drug overdose deaths, which was roughly a 54% increase in two years. Of those people who died, 323 were white and 231 Black, with about 77% of the overdoses occurring at home.
The county's most hard hit ZIP codes include 53204 and 53215, which include the near south side neighborhoods of Walker's Point, Clarke Square, Historic Mitchell Street, Burnham Park, Lincoln Village and Polonia, according to Ben Weston, the county's chief health policy advisor.
“Everyone in our community knows someone affected by the scourge of the opioid epidemic. It’s derailed lives and taken loved ones from us far too soon," County Board Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson said. "The damage continues to hit home in devastating ways."
Where does the settlement money come from?
The first tranche of settlement dollars for Milwaukee County came from a statewide settlement in 2021 from three distributors — Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen — and a manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson for their role in this national health crisis.
Milwaukee County carried on litigation with a second group of distributors, which included Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Allergan Finance, LLC, Walgreen Co., Walmart, Inc., CVS Health Corporation and CVS Pharmacy, Inc, resulting in the latest settlement dollars.
The settlements will be paid over the next two decades.
What can the money be used for?
For the first lump of settlement funds, the county was provided a list of eligible uses of the money in a 15-page document, including: the expansion of training to use a Naloxone or other FDA-approved drugs to reverse opioid overdoses, increase distribution of medication-assisted treatment, treatment for neonatal abstinence syndrome, treatment for incarcerated populations, and prevention programs.
In the second settlement agreement, the county said the funds are expected to "support a wide-range of approaches to reducing death from overdose including countywide distribution of harm reduction supplies, Narcan distribution for law enforcement and first responders, and building capacity at residential substance abuse treatment facilities."
What has Milwaukee County already done with some of the money?
The county has put the first tranche of settlement money toward harm reduction, prevention, and treatment efforts countywide.
Earlier this year, Crowley and Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors allocated more than $11 million of settlement funds for projects designed for treatment and abatement as well as other strategies to address the ongoing opioid crisis. This included the installation of of harm reduction vending machines that contain free fentanyl test strips, nasal Narcan, gun locks, among other harm reduction and prevention supplies across the county, with the first vending machine installed on the first floor of the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center at 1220 W. Vliet St. in March.
The county previously announced plans to also invest in increasing the number of residential substance abuse treatment facilities, the Medically Assisted Treatment program at the Community Reintegration Center (formerly known as the House of Correction), fund community-based organizations and nonprofits to help support residents, staffing and supplies at the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office, as well as provide drug prevention and intervention services to juveniles at the Vel R. Phillips Juvenile Justice Center.
What are the next steps?
Milwaukee County's Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) will regrant the settlement funds to community-based organizations through its Coordination of Opioid Prevention Services Project, according to a statement from the county. Organizations can apply through an application process as part of the project and those chosen will be announced sometime during the summer.
In February, DHHS asked for community input from residents, providers and people who have been affected by the opioid crisis on to invest the money.
Contact Vanessa Swales at 414-308-5881 or vswales@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Vanessa_Swales.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee County has won a historic $101 million from opioid companies
