Over the course of 18 years, Ohio and its communities are receiving nearly $2 billion from pharmaceutical companies to compensate for harm caused by opioids. The Ohio Newsroom is following the money. This is our settlement story of the month.
A new database tracks how state and local governments across the country are spending billions of dollars in opioid settlement funds. But there aren’t many entries for Ohio.
“And that’s because there are almost no requirements for the entities in Ohio to report how the money is being used,” said Aneri Pattani, a senior correspondent with KFF Health News.
She and her colleagues partnered with experts at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Shatterproof, a nonprofit dedicated to addiction, to compile the database tracking settlement funds. It’s the most comprehensive tool to date to do so, detailing upwards of 7,000 ways the money has been used around the country.
The database shows Ohio received $158 million in 2022 and 2023 from opioid settlements, but about half of those funds are untraceable, meaning there aren’t public records on how they’re being spent.
“The local governments, the state government really don't share in Ohio how they're spending this money, so there's not a lot of insight,” Pattani said.
She joined the Ohio Newsroom to talk about the database and what she learned about Ohio’s spending so far.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
On how states are spending opioid settlement funds generally
“Big picture, we found that during 2022 and 2023, state and local governments received a little over $6 billion in opioid settlement funds. If you break that down, we found that they spent or committed about a third of that amount. Another third, they set aside and said, ‘Hey, we want to use this in future years. We haven't made a decision as of the end of 2023.’ And then you get to the final third that was untrackable. We just couldn't find public reports on how that money was spent.
On Ohio’s spending
“What stood out about Ohio is, to me, the untrackable amount. In Ohio, we found that in 2022 and 2023, the state and local governments received about $158 million. Of that, about $84 million was untraceable. We couldn't find public records on it. So that means a little more than half, we don't know what happened to that money. And that's because there are almost no requirements for the entities in charge of the money in Ohio to publicly report how it's being used.
“There's one foundation, the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, that voluntarily makes some information available. And they did share some information with us, which is why we have some insight into what happened in Ohio in that time period. But the local governments, the state governments really don't share in Ohio how they're spending this money, so there's not a lot of insight.”
On distributing money through grants
“What we learned from the OneOhio Recovery Foundation is that they had $51 million set aside for regional grants as of the end of 2023. And that was a big ‘not committed’ bucket to say, ‘Hey, we still haven't made any decisions about this money.’ That’s not totally an outlier because there were other states that wanted to take it slow and have a process.
“But, from talking with folks on the ground across the country, there's a lot of frustration with that sort of slow spending because people were seeing individuals dying on a day-to-day basis or struggling to access treatment. They felt this urgency of wanting the money to get out there. I will say this: in 2024, after our data collection happened, the OneOhio Recovery Foundation did actually put out $51 million in grants, so that money is getting out the door now. But at the time that we did our collection, there was a lot of frustration with states that hadn't committed money yet.”
On the future of the database
“Informally, I will continue reporting on this money and seeing how people are talking about it and wanting it to be spent. In terms of the formal data tracking project, I hope to [continue], but we'll see. It's a monster of a project, and so we'll see if we have the ability to continue it into the next year.”
