Maryland will receive $90 million from Sackler opioid settlement

Maryland will receive about $90 million from the recent $7.4 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family for their role in the opioid crisis.

Purdue and the Sacklers are most associated with the development and wide dissemination of OxyContin, an opioid that was widely prescribed in the late 1990s into the 2010s.

Purdue filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after investigations and a statement of charges.

“The opioid crisis has devastated Maryland families and communities, and the Sacklers must be held accountable for the role they played in fueling it,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. “This settlement will support treatment, prevention, and recovery for Marylanders who have suffered for far too long.”

In total, Maryland has secured nearly $750 million in opioid settlement funds from companies involved in the manufacturing and distribution of the drugs, which will be paid out over the next eighteen years.

That does not include the hundreds of millions separately won by the city of Baltimore.

Last year, the Maryland Office of Overdose Response published recommendations on how the state and localities should spend the funds.

The suggestions focus on five areas: Public safety, recovery, treatment, harm reduction and prevention.

They included concepts like supporting programs that focus on families dealing with substance use, expanding street-based outreach, increasing naloxone distribution, expanding access to recovery centers and promoting alternatives to incarceration for drug-related offenses.

“We want to make sure that all of Marylanders have access to Naloxone, which is our number one tool for reversing an overdose,” said Emily Keller, Maryland’s special secretary of opioid response. “It's absolutely the number one life saving tool, and I think something that Maryland has really thrived at.”

The state recently awarded $12.4 million to 28 organizations across Maryland to prevent overdoses and educate people about opioids.

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