We at Families as Allies stand with families who have lost children and other loved ones to opioid overdoses. We stand with families who are no longer together due to opioid addiction. We stand with our friends in recovery and those who are struggling to find support that works for them.
Over the past two years, we, along with many Mississippians affected by the opioid crisis, have closely watched how Mississippi is planning for and spending its share of the settlement funds that drug companies were required to pay states to help people affected by the opioid epidemic.
Mississippi was one of the last, if not the last, states in the country to put together its committee to advise the legislature on how to spend the funds. The committee began meeting last summer and submitted its recommendations to the legislature just before it convened in January.
We are concerned that the advisory committee has limited representation from people with lived experience and those with expertise in treating opioid use disorders, although we appreciate legislators’ initial efforts to bring those groups to the table. We are also concerned that the grant application process was not streamlined and that the advisory committee recommended that most of the money be granted to the committee members who applied. We were alarmed when the advisory group freely discussed their proposals in meetings, especially since applicants from smaller organizations were not on the committee and had no way to discuss their proposals or answer questions about them.
We appreciate that legislators introduced legislation to address some of these concerns. We encourage you to look at amendments to HB 1760 and SB 2726. Legislators added safeguards and rules about how they and the Attorney General can spend opioid settlement funds, and about the roles of the committee that advises them. These updates require decision makers to prioritize evidence-based approaches to opioid use disorder treatment. They also require state agencies and other stakeholders on the advisory committee to recuse themselves from discussions about their own applications. The law instructs the committee to contract with an objective third party to set up grant application processes.
We encourage you to review these amendments, especially the underlined sections, and let your legislators know what you think of these proposed safeguards and any recommendations you have to ensure these funds help the people who most need the support.
