INDIANA — Indiana’s attorney general said this week he’s ready to support using the $12.5 million Indiana is to receive as part of a recent settlement with an international consulting firm to go toward initiatives across the state to help in the addiction crisis.
A near $600 million agreement was reached between the consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, and 47 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories.
Separate settlements have been reached with two other states not part of this lawsuit. McKinsey worked with PurduePharma, the maker of OxyContin, on strategies to market the drug.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said during a visit to New Albany this week that the action is a major victory.
“I think people lose track of it because the opioid crisis and the conversation around it has been going on for the better part of a decade now,” he said. “[But] this is the first time Indiana has received settlement monies.
“It really marks the first legal victory in terms of a win for the State of Indiana.”
Although the decision on how to spend the settlement funds will largely be in the hands of Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s legal team, state legislators and the attorney general’s office, Rokita said he wants to see it benefit communities across the state who need it.
“We haven’t decided how to spend the money and the ‘we’ isn’t just me,” he said, adding that he hopes it can go into programming “that’s truly representative of the state. They have an opportunity here.”
Rokita said the way the current law reads, the monies will go into a settlement fund, “and we’re working on ways to use that.”
“You usually do it through an appropriations bill and we’re in the right session to do that but there might be some special stand-alone legislation. I know the governor has ideas, individuals representatives and senators will have some ideas, I have some ideas.”
He said as soon as he and his team were sworn in in early January, “we were right on top of it,” he said. “It was our top priority to bring this huge plane in for a landing.”
But, he added that it “certainly didn’t start on Jan. 11; it has been years in the making. And as I’ve gone around to meet deputies attorney general and their staff, it really is a credit to them that they were so diligent over the last four years working this case.”
Rokita first realized the extent of the crisis when in his former role as a U.S. Congressman he visited Austin, which several years ago was the epicenter of HIV related to intravenous drug use in the U.S.
“I saw firsthand,” he said. “I saw the needles in the streets...I remember the police officer telling me ‘wait until about 2:30, you’re going to start to see.’ “I realized then the fight we had on our hands.”
Barb Anderson, founding member of grassroots community organization Clark County CARES, said she’d like to see at least a portion of the settlement go toward helping sustain programs already in place, and ramping up wraparound services for people in recovery.
Through increased attention by groups like Clark County CARES and others in the community dedicated to fighting the opioid and addiction issues, treatment services have swelled from the just two in place a few years ago.
“I would hope a portion of that money could be used to make sure they’re sustained,” she said, adding that the wraparound services portion is crucial to people in recovery — especially the vulnerability that can come with graduating from a treatment program back into the world, where “the everyday pressures of living can get to people. Funding that would be invaluable.”
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