By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
Powerful drugs have powerful effects, and opioid drugs are among the most powerful drugs available. Many have been prescribed opioids as pain management drugs, due to permanent conditions or after major surgeries, due to the fact that opioid drugs travel through the bloodstream and attach themselves to opioid receptors in brain cells and block pain messages. This can also boost feelings of pleasure and euphoria (a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness). According to the Mayo Clinic, “what makes opioid medicines effective for treating pain also can make them dangerous.”
Opioids have been available for years through prescription in the form of codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, fentanyl, and in extreme situations, morphine. The illegal street drug heroin is also an opioid, and prescription drugs are also sold illegally, which compounds the problem and has led to what is known as the opioid crisis.
Drug use and abuse is not a new development, and many individuals have suffered from addiction. But the crisis itself is believed to have begun in the middle to late 1990s due to the over prescribing of opioid medications.
Because of this crisis, state attorney generals and other legal entities sued the producers and distributors of several opioid medications, citing that they presented the drugs as non-addictive, and in 2021 a national opioid settlement was reached with defendants Janssen, Cardinal, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Teva, Allergan, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and Kroger Co. Kentucky’s $478 million share of those settlements will be distributed pursuant to the terms of House Bill 427, which allocates 50 percent of all proceeds to local governments, with the Commonwealth receiving the other 50 percent.
The money received from the opioid settlement does come with its own restrictions, however, because it is not technically government funds. It is not tax revenue, which state and local governments already have regulations to manage, but must instead be used specifically to address the opioid crisis. Many local governments especially have experienced difficulty applying the money as intended due to unclear guidance. But as state and federal governments work to apply the funds correctly, guidance concerning those funds has improved.
“Because this money is a result of litigation, it needs to go to the people they have litigated for,” Rene Parsons of Business Cultivation Foundation said.
One major challenge of this, Parsons said, is that many of the litigants have already died due to their addictions.
“And there are so many affected,” she explained. “The challenge is how do you deploy this money on such a massive scale. So, you really need to give this money to their elected officials, chosen by their communities, and let them decide.”
“But there are parameters in place on how the money can be spent,” Parsons said. “You can’t for instance spend it on water because the community needs water.”
Parsons said there are three pillars around which the funding could be said to revolve.
“Those pillars are law enforcement, recovery, and prevention. Those are very broad categories,” she said. “And it helps to think of it in these terms. What do you do after, which would be law enforcement, what do you do during, which would be rehabilitation (recovery), and what do you do before, which would be prevention.”
Parsons said that the people involved at the state level are dedicated, and they are constantly reevaluating and readjusting some of these parameters to make them more focused and effective. The initial parameters when it began in 2023 weren’t adequately clarified, she said, but have since been improved to prevent using the funds for things they were not intended to cover.
“Another thing to consider is that these funds are a finite amount, and we need to get a handle on it early in the game,” she said. “Yes, it is a lot of money, and it will be trickling in over the next fifteen years, but there is a limit. So, we really need to pay attention to the outcomes of the things we are supporting.”
Parsons said the state is keeping watch on the things being funded from the standpoints of efficacy and whether it can be maintained going forward once opioid funds are no longer available.
“That’s not to say that there can’t be additional funding, but the second round of funding might be twenty-five percent less than the original funding,” Parsons said. “That’s why we need to determine if the things we’re funding can be self-sustaining rather than be dependent upon grants that are finite.”
Parsons said that with this round of funding the state wanted to focus in particular on prevention for children in grades K through 12.
“This cycle is open to proposals from December 2 through January 17 of 2025. They will evaluate the proposals through spring, and do announcements in the summer,” Parsons said. “And then the funds will be deployed around August.”
Funds are given by the state to local governments, Parsons said, but that does not mean that individual businesses cannot get grants through the opioid fund.
“They ask that you already have an established business of some sort,” Parsons said. “You can be a for profit business, a nonprofit business, a special purpose government entity, or a government agency, but you can’t be a private citizen.”
This is regulated, Parsons said, through Kentucky Revised Statute (KRS) 15.291.
“The state is encouraging trying new things that we might not have tried before,” Parsons said. “And maybe those new things will yield better results than what we have tried in the past. And if those new things are sustainable, then of course they might be eligible for other grants that aren’t from this finite pool of money.”
Parson encourages anyone with a proposal to contact her at Business Cultivation Foundation, located in the Tourism log cabin in Grayson, because she is willing to discuss it and offer advice and insight.
“If you think you have an idea that works, come talk to us,” she said. “We’ll see if it fits the statute, we’ll write you a proposal, and put it out there.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
