OPIOID SETTLEMENT: Grand Traverse County expects $800K in new money

Peter Kobs, The Record-Eagle, Traverse City, Mich.
·3 min read

Apr. 23—TRAVERSE CITY — Grand Traverse County officials will meet on Wednesday to discuss if, how and when to spend $800,000 in new funds from the national opioid settlement.

That new money comes on the heels of $715,000 received from the class-action settlement in 2023.

Members of the county's Opioid Epidemic Task Force have met several times to discuss options for the settlement money, but no specific large-scale plans have been announced so far.

One possible option is pooling funds with other municipalities and counties in the region to combat treat drug abuse in a bigger way, including the possibility of establishing a regional drug treatment facility. Funding for drug abuse prevention and rapid response efforts is also under consideration.

Wednesday's task force meeting, which is open to the public, is scheduled for noon in the Great Lakes Conference Room on the third floor of the governmental center, 400 Boardman Ave., in downtown Traverse City.

Grand Traverse County isn't alone in receiving large amounts of money from the national opioid settlement.

On the state level, Michigan will receive will get nearly $800 million over the next 18 years, according to officials in Lansing. That figure could grow as other companies come to the settlement table.

About 50 percent of the state's money will be distributed directly to county, city and township governments. The remaining 50 percent will be earmarked for a designated fund called the "Michigan Opioid Healing and Recovery Fund."

Opioids, particularly synthetic opioids like fentanyl, are the "main driver of drug overdose deaths" in the United States today, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fentanyl is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin, CDC officials said.

Data illustrates the brutal toll of opioid abuse in recent years:

Six times as many Americans died from a drug overdose in 2021 compared to 1999, the CDC reported, and the vast majority of those deaths (75 percent) involved opioids.

In 2022 alone, more than 78,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses, according to the CDC. Statistics for 2023 are still being compiled and analyzed.

Closer to home, nearly 14,000 Michigan residents died of opioid overdoses from 2018 to 2022. Of the 264 suspected overdoses in Grand Traverse County during 2022, 23 were fatal.

The Michigan Attorney General's Office has created an online estimator to help local governments determine how much much settlement money may come their way.

According to a memo from Deputy Administrator Chris Forsyth, Grand Traverse County should receive about $800,000 this year, $334,000 next year and then payments raging from $350,000 to $300,000 for the next eight years.

Annual payments to the county then decrease from $240,000 to $200,000 for the years 2033-38, he noted, then fall to about $158,000 in 2038, which is last year of payments.

So far, more than a dozen major companies have agreed to pay into the multi-billion-dollar settlement pool, which will be paid out peace meal over two decades.

Key defendants in the national case include Allergan, CVS, Janssen, Teva, Walgreens and Walmart, as well as major drug distributors like Janssen and distributors Cardinal and McKesson.

To learn more about the opioid epidemic, visit the CDC's special online primer at https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/basics/epidemic.html.