Dallas County receiving $40M as a part of opioid settlement
DALLAS - Dallas County received millions of dollars from its first distribution of a national settlement to treat and prevent opioid addiction.
Drug makers and distributors agreed to pay billions in response to the drug abuse crisis.
Dallas County is set to get $40 million total from that national settlement with the drug makers, while $10 million of that is already here and being put to use.
Plus, there are millions more from a Centers for Disease Control grant to bolster response to opioid overdoses.
"Dallas County was one of the first ones in the fray, $50 billion over the next 18 years," Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price said.
The $50 billion was from opioid manufacturers spread to states across America addressing what opioid addiction has done.
"Dallas was impacted in a way that most people can't even begin to believe," Price said.
First responders and hospital emergency rooms have been treating rising numbers of overdose patients.
In Texas last year, an average of five people died every day from opioids.
Texas expects $1.5 billion as part of nationwide opioid settlement with drugmakers
The money is expected to go toward treatment programs and other efforts to help with the opioid crisis.
"Especially with young people. No matter what the age is with opioids, it’s putting me out right? I am medicating whatever is going on in my life," said Joe Powell, executive director of Associated Persons Affected by Addiction.
Associated Persons Affected by Addiction is one of the treatment centers working to break addictions.
Powell said the danger of opioids is really its draw.
"Wherever the dope where they are dying, that's the dope that people want," he explained. "If you are addicted to heroin, then wherever the drug is that's killing them, that's of course the most potent drug and that's the drug that addicts want….that's what you're seeing with fentanyl."
Centers for Disease Control has just awarded Dallas County $11 million to expand its response to opioid overdoses.
It has helped in creating a 24/7 opioid prevention hotline, increasing the number of opioid response teams, and placing chemical dependency counselors inside Parkland Hospital’s emergency department.
FULL CONVERSATION: Dallas Co. Opioid Crisis
Shaun Rabb talks with Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price and Joe Powell, the executive director of Associated Persons Affected by Addiction about the challenges Dallas County faces in the opioid crisis and the national settlement to treat and prevent opioid addiction.
"It's in accordance with them, trying to undergird public health structures, public health departments across this country, $11 million over the next five years, about $2 million a year," Price said.
Helping to fight the domino effect of opioid addiction.
"This has led to mass incarceration. This has led to death. Texas has the largest prison system in the free world, and when you look at the impact in that institution, then basically a lot of it is drug related," Price explained. "And so when we look at this, we have a greater impact probably than most places in this country."
It’s still being negotiated what the county will receive from retailers like CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart.