AUGUSTA, Maine (WGAN) Maine will receive as much as $130 million over the next 18 years as part of a national opioid settlement.
Attorney General Aaron Frey announced Friday the agreement reached with towns, cities and school districts over the state’s use of proceeds from the national settlement.
The settlement resolved lawsuits filed by several states against drug maker Johnson & Johnson and three distributors for their role in the opioid crisis.
Frey says half of the state’s payout will go to a Maine Recovery Fund, and will establish a Recovery Council to make decisions on how best to use the funding to curb the opioid epidemic.
Thirty percent will go to the 39 Maine counties and municipalities that either filed litigation or have more than 10,000 residents. Twenty percent will go to the state and be administered by Frey’s office to address the epidemic.
Distribution of the funds is expected to begin as soon as April.
Gov. Janet Mills says she applauds Frey’s work to hold the companies accountable.
“Maine people have suffered and lost their lives at the hands of companies that peddled dangerously addictive opioids to boost their profits and bottom lines,” she said in a statement on Friday.
It comes at a time when states across the country are looking at new programs and funding to address opioid addiction. In 2021, the number of drug overdoses in Maine increased by nearly a quarter, with 636 overdose deaths reported that year.
According to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 92,000 people died of drug-involved overdoses from illicit drugs and prescription opioids in 2020.
