North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein announced over the weekend that the state’s $750 million portion of a $26 billion national opioid settlement agreed to back in February will begin to be distributed within the next two months.
Stein, a Democrat, discussed the settlement and the next steps on WRAL’s “On the Record” on April 30.
The agreement, announced on Feb. 25, was made with three major pharmaceutical distributors – Cardinal, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen – as well as drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson.
“These companies made billions of dollars while millions of Americans got hooked on opioids. In North Carolina, we’ve already lost at least 20,000 people to this crisis, and countless families more have been devastated by loss and addiction,” Stein said.
Stein took a leadership role in getting a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from 52 states and territories to join together to hold corporations accountable for the pain and suffering caused by the opioid epidemic they are largely responsible for.
Here in North Carolina, all 100 counties, plus 47 municipalities, have signed on to the agreement.
According to the announcement from Stein’s office, “Eighty-five percent of these funds will go directly to North Carolina’s local communities to support treatment, recovery, harm reduction, and other strategies to address the opioid epidemic. The balance will go to the state for the same purposes.”
North Carolina’s opioid settlement dashboard offers tools, resources, and other information to local governments receiving opioid settlement funds.
Click here to read more about the $26 billion opioid settlement.
