Opioid settlement money to target high rates of addiction in Arkansas

Arkansas claimed one other shameful rating because the state with the second-highest price of opioid prescriptions as of 2020. The result’s a rising variety of opioid overdose deaths, to not point out the misplaced jobs and damaged households habit leaves in its wake.

Final week, although, the Arkansas Opioid Restoration Partnership launched efforts to place Arkansas’s $200 million share of opioid settlement cash to work the place it might do some good. A crew effort by the Affiliation of Arkansas Counties and the Arkansas Municipal League, the Arkansas Opioid Restoration Partnership is taking functions and is able to begin funding native efforts to curb habit and assist households get well monetary and emotional stability.

“Each greenback we get must have a reputation. All the things we do must maintain one other Arkansan from overdosing on opioids,” Arkansas Opioid Restoration Partnership Director Kirk Lane mentioned. Lane beforehand served as state drug director.

The cash from courtroom settlements will roll into Arkansas over the subsequent 16 to 18 years, and there’s a method behind placing it to work on the metropolis and county ranges, quite than counting on the state to disburse all the cash from the highest down.

The state funneled tobacco settlement cash largely via the well being care system, a simple catchment zone for folks struggling the ailing results of tobacco habit. However opioid habit performs out in another way, with jails, native regulation enforcement and homeless shelters serving as probably the most pure contact factors for figuring out folks in want. It merely makes extra sense to focus on this settlement cash to native efforts, Kirk mentioned.

Proper now Arkansas has $10 million in hand, able to put to make use of. Any group with an evidence-based plan to battle opioid habit is invited to use for a bit of the settlement cash.