Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and its owners, the Sackler family, have faced hundreds of lawsuits across the country due to their role fueling the opioid epidemic. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Washington is so far set to receive around $1.6 billion in settlement funds from companies that played a role fueling the opioid epidemic.
That’s according to the state attorney general’s office and a database from KFF Health News, which tracks the largest opioid settlement to date — $26 billion paid to states across the country by three pharmaceutical distributors and an opioid manufacturer.
Local governments in Washington are expected to receive an estimated $373 million from the national settlement over the next two decades. They’ll also get about $645 million up until 2038 from $1.3 billion in various state settlements. The other half of the $1.3 billion will go to Washington’s state government. Other settlements still pending could yield additional money.
More than $4.3 billion from the nationwide settlement had been distributed as of late February, about $57 million of which has gone to over 100 cities and counties across Washington.
Here we take a look at how the money is getting used in five of the state’s counties.
All five emphasized that they want to ensure programs created with the funds don’t end when the money runs out and said they worked with community organizations, people affected by the opioid crisis and medical providers to guide spending.
King County
King County anticipates spending an average of $3.4 million in opioid settlement funds a year between 2022 to 2038, with about 75% of the money going to community organizations, said Laura Meader, program manager at the Seattle & King County public health department.
Those dollars are aimed at addressing “disparities in the communities most affected by harms caused by the opioid crisis,” Meader said, which means the funds are available not just for direct treatment, but for other surrounding supports, like organizations providing grief counseling for communities affected by overdose deaths.
The county is reviewing the first round of applications from community groups and expects to launch another soon, with contracts for the first round granted this summer and the second round sometime in the fall.
King County has also already spent around $200,000 on harm reduction services, including supplies like naloxone, an overdose reversal medication, and fentanyl test strips.
Seattle has its own designated dollars — about $13 million from the national settlement, $34 million in state funds and potential dollars from the city’s ongoing litigation. The city is putting together its own plan, Meader said.
“Settlement dollars — it’s a brand new space for all local and state municipalities,” Meader said. “We’re all learning together and recognize that it can be challenging to program these funds when there’s not existing infrastructure everywhere. We feel really fortunate here in King County.”
Find King County’s full plan here.
Spokane County
Spokane County has approved $7.2 million in projects so far with opioid settlement funds, with $5.2 million going to expand the Spokane Regional Crisis Stabilization Center, including introducing 23-hour immediate crisis and stabilization services. The county hopes the project will help alleviate the burden left behind by the closure of four behavioral health facilities in Spokane County over the last several years.
“If someone has a need, they go to the ER, and that’s not for behavioral health treatment,” said Justin Johnson, director of Spokane County Community Services.
Another $1.2 million will go to fund 16 beds at the center to expand treatment in the next two years while the center undergoes longer-term expansion and renovation.
Meanwhile, the county wants to ensure families have somewhere to go after treatment: $600,000 will go to housing and treatment support — such as child care and case management — for parents and caregivers of infants affected by drug use.
“If we’re willing to support treatment, why aren’t we willing to support the comprehensive array of services to make sure it’s successful?” Johnson said.
Spokane County is also trying to help its neighbors. The county helps provide crisis and involuntary treatment services across six neighboring counties and is partnering with those counties to determine how to best use their opioid dollars.
Find the county’s full plan here.
Snohomish County
Snohomish County officials, like those in Spokane, said one of the biggest needs is consistent access to addiction treatment, particularly in more rural areas of the county, where patients were traveling for hours to get to clinics in Everett.
“It literally was keeping [patients] from being able to hold a job,” said Jason Biermann, the county’s lead on its use of opioid settlement funds.
But in western Washington, the cost of a new building would be too expensive to cover with the settlement funds, Biermann said. So instead, Snohomish County will spend about $600,000 a year to launch a mobile treatment van that will provide methadone and other medications for patients with opioid-use disorder.
The state already funds several of these vans, but Snohomish County’s van will be entirely paid for with opioid settlement funds. Biermann said the county already believes there is a need for more than one van, and hopes that if the first is successful, they may be able to fund more vans with state dollars.
Aside from funding staff and community organizations, the county has also funneled about $121,000 to its existing “Leave-Behind” program, which allows first responders to leave behind naloxone after responding to an overdose.
Biermann said he hopes the public will understand that the settlement dollars are not the “huge windfall” they appear to be because they have to be doled out to so many different local governments — and that Snohomish County, like most other counties, has other opioid epidemic-related investments, such as $8 million in federal pandemic aid going to brick-and-mortar treatment facilities.
“Settlement funds are one piece of a very complex puzzle,” Biermann said.
The county’s full plan can be found here.
Pierce County
Pierce County is still figuring out where its first round of settlement dollars will go.
“We want to have a robust plan in place before we start spending the money,” said Margo Burnison, behavioral health manager for the county.
Burnison said the county has some ideas based on what the state is doing, like mobile health treatment vans and “behavioral health hubs” where providers use shared space to provide comprehensive treatment for substance-use disorder.
The county has ten cities that are all separately receiving opioid dollars. At least four are planning on pooling their money with Pierce County: Bonney Lake, Fife, Edgewood and Sumner.
Of the county’s jurisdictions, only Gig Harbor — which is set to receive about $445,000 in state funds and $175,000 in national settlement funds — has used any of its opioid dollars. Gig Harbor used some of its money to hire a housing, health and human services program manager, Shealynn Smiley. Smiley started in October last year and has since worked to bring in existing services across Pierce County into Gig Harbor.
“Being across the bridge and out here there’s so many wonderful service providers like in Tacoma that haven’t had the opportunity to build that relationship in the Harbor,” Smiley said. “So that has really been my focus.”
Pierce County is also working with the city of Tacoma, which hasn’t used any of its dollars yet — about $6.7 million from the national settlement and $17 million from the state — but has set aside about $100,000 a year for its therapeutic courts, which aim to reduce recidivism through intensive support in court, like offering treatment providers and peer counselors.
“We’re trying to be very thoughtful and strategic about how to use this relatively small amount in comparison to the scope of the problem,” said Jacques Colon, director of Tacoma’s Office of Strategy.
Clark County
Clark County is contracting with Carelon Behavioral Health, a behavioral health care management company based in Boston, to administer its settlement funds.
The company has a close relationship with both local and state government in Washington: It provides behavioral health crisis services to eight different counties, including Clark County, and works with the state’s Health Care Authority to provide an array of services, including substance-use disorder services, to the state’s Medicaid patients.
The county’s opioid abatement council — councils every county has by law that determine how to use the settlement dollars — has also just awarded nearly $1 million to nine community organizations providing drug prevention, treatment programs and recovery services.
Those grants include $270,612 to Clark County Jail Services to increase the number of eligible incarcerated people provided medications for opioid-use disorder and $53,975 for Southwest Washington Accountable Community of Health to support its network of naloxone vending machines.
Carelon is keeping all public information about its work administering opioid funds for Clark County here.
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