Town Hall held on opioid settlement

LAURINBURG — “We got one shot at this thing. We need to make it right.”

Those were the words spoken by Commissioner Bo Frizell Monday during a Town Hall held by the Scotland County Board of Commissioners, where members of the public, county department heads and other stakeholders met to discuss and learn about ways to spend the $5.2 million in opioid settlement funds, Scotland is in line to receive over an 18-year span.

The State of North Carolina will receive $1.5 billion from a series of national opioid settlements now totaling $56 billion. More funding may come with several lawsuits still being tied up in court.

“These are lawsuits with manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies that distributed these opioid pills so there are a number of different companies involved in these lawsuits and several more are coming online as well,” said Elizabeth Brewington, of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners.

From the year 2000 to 2020, more than 36,000 North Carolinians have lost their lives to overdose, according to provisional data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

“These are our friends, our neighbors, our family members and this is really sad context for the facts we have those opioid settlement funds,” Brewington said.

The funds are to be used to help bring relief to support treatment, recovery, harm reduction and other life-saving programs and services in communities throughout the state. North Carolina is unique in that 85% of the funding is going directly to local governments. The remaining 15% will go to the state’s General Assembly.

“No other state in the country has that,” Brewington said.

With funding going straight to the hands of local governments, Brewington gave those at Monday’s Town Hall resources and discussed options in determining how the adequately spend the funding in Scotland County.

The state is requiring counties and cities, through the NC Memorandum of Agreement, to spend their settlement funds either two ways, Brewington said.

Under Option A, a local government may fund one or more strategies from a shorter list of evidence-based, high-impact strategies to address the epidemic. Through Option B, a local government engages in a collaborative strategic planning process (Exhibit C) involving a diverse array of stakeholders and may then fund a strategy from the Exhibit A list or a longer list of strategies (Exhibit B) included in the national settlements.

Brewington presented at length the Option A method on Monday, which goes through the list of strategies that include collaborative strategic planning, evidence-based addiction treatment, recovery support services, recovery housing support, employment-related services, early intervention, Naloxone distribution, post-overdose response team, a Syringe Service Program, criminal justice diversion programs, Addiction treatment for incarcerated persons and reentry programs.

“Option A is very much thinking and targeting people the closest impacted to the overdose crisis today whereas Option B is more of the ripple effects, the community engagement piece,” Brewington said.

Commissioner Darrel B.J. Gibson asked if Scotland is allowed to choose multiple strategies to target at once or use one in particular and move forward.

“You’re allowed to pick as many as you want. The only caveat is that then you need to report on each one you pick,” Brewington said.

Attendees had the opportunity to ask questions and give input.

Kenneth Samuda, representing Emmanuel Sons and Daughters of Prophesy, told commissioners to consider funding the construction of an in-treatment facility.

Samuda, who has more than 30 years of experience with people dealing with addiction and who was once an addict himself, said his organization is filled with qualified individuals who are ready to address the needs in Scotland County.

“With all the experience that I bring to the table, I believe that an in-patient facility will do a lot more good. (With) out-patient, people come in and they stay four hours and then they go back into the situation that caused the problem in the first place,” Samuda said.

One of the largest hurdles Scotland faces is finding the right strategies to fund with allotments decreasing each year, commissioners said.

“The tricky part of this is that money fluctuates every year … if you get into a long-term commitment, the money may not even be there,” Chairman Tim Ivey said.

According to the County manager April Snead, Scotland County has about $523,000 of the settlement funds so far.

“The biggest installments come in the first year and then it’s going to get smaller and smaller as these 18 years go,” Snead told commissioners and the audience in attendance.

Brewington said that Scotland should expect to see a large sum in the next installment, factoring in the $3 billion settlement, reached with Walmart, which is able to provide all its settlement funding at once.

“They’re expected early 2024 for that come in,” Brewington said.

Scotland is projected to receive $714,806 in that payment installment. The installment will then decrease to $376,711 in the fiscal year 2024-25 payment cycle, then installments will slowly drop over the next 15 years.

“I would urge you to consider what are the long-term sustainable solutions … $500,000 is a lot of money but if you’re talking about something that is going to be sustainable over 18 years where it dips down to over $127,000, we start figuring in staff that might be involved, cost of supplies, capital … That’s something where $127,000 to be able to fuel a program addressing this challenge is really not that much. It goes quickly,” said David Pope, who is to soon become the Scotland Health Care System’s CEO. “

Anyone is able to monitor the opioid settlement funds payment schedule for Scotland County at the data dashboard at ncopioidsettlement.org.