Dallas County is set to spend $31 million in lawsuit settlement funds on opioid recovery initiatives amid the ongoing opioid addiction crisis.
The State of Texas, along with several counties and local governments, has sued drug manufacturers and distributors, including Allergan, Johnson & Johnson, Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart. Settlements from those lawsuits are now being dispersed throughout Texas, as reported by The Dallas Morning News.
About $1.6 billion in settlement funds will be distributed across the state over the next 18 years, according to estimates from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
Some $31 million of these funds have been allocated to Dallas County, but County Judge Clay Jenkins said the county will likely receive a total of $131 million over the next 18 years. Dallas County commissioners are aiming to spend the settlement money on opioid recovery initiatives.
“It’s unlikely that you’re going to get even a drop in the bucket of the true out-of-pocket expense of opioids,” Jenkins said, per DMN. “You can’t really put a value on all the broken lives at home: moms and dads, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters lost from opioid deaths, destroyed lives, destroyed marriages, destroyed homes.”
Prescription opioids also likely contributed to increases in drug trafficking, with fentanyl and other deadly drugs circulating in communities. According to the City of Dallas crime overview dashboard, there have been 9,169 criminal drug offenses committed this year as of November 24, marking a 3.6% increase over the same period in 2022.
Drug crimes have been especially prevalent in Downtown Dallas, which has been impacted by the Dallas Police Department’s ongoing police shortage, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Earlier in November, the Dallas County Commissioners Court authorized spending $1.1 million of the settlement funds on lab equipment and staff for a drug testing program.
Jenkins said the program was the first to receive settlement funds because the necessary equipment needed to be purchased promptly.
Dallas County Health and Human Services (DCHHS) director Philip Huang said his department does not currently have the resources to conduct opioid testing.
“[The new program is] really building our capacity to provide this service,” Huang said, explaining that the county has been depending on third-party laboratories for testing.
Commissioner Andrew Sommerman said drug testing is a critical step in addressing the opioid crisis.
“It’s important that first you identify the people who have the problem,” he said, per DMN. “Second, how to treat them. And then third, how to keep them off the problem. That’s the frontline issue.”
After the testing program is implemented, DCHHS intends to expand it to include private hospitals, according to Huang.
In the future, additional settlement funding could be used for programs that connect jail inmates to drug rehabilitation programs, as reported by DMN.
