Alabama attorney general urges cities to apply ‘ethics’ approach to divesting opioid settlements

EXCLUSIVE — Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall is calling on cities to apply the state’s “ethics laws” for divesting money from opioid settlements back into the hands of victims of the addictive pharmaceutical drugs, cautioning against “public-private partnerships.”

Marshall announced in June that the state would receive nearly $249 million over the next 10-15 years in opioid settlement money from pharmacies and drugmakers for their role in the opioid epidemic. In a letter obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner, he urged locals in the Yellowhammer State to take a “ground-up approach” over entrusting public-private partnerships to manage the settlement funds, saying, “We owe it to the People of Alabama to get this right.”

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“I am sure that many of you have already been approached by a variety of vendors seeking funding for opioid initiatives. Please proceed with caution,” Marshall wrote in the two-page letter addressed to state commissioners and councilmen. “Though public-private partnerships may prove valuable in some instances, investing your funds with outside vendors should only be done after thorough examination of demonstrated successes in other cities or states.”

The Republican attorney general underscored that communities should direct the funds toward three main categories, “education, prevention, and treatment,” saying each category is intended to provide flexibility to address the needs of each community while setting “guardrails” to ensure that the funds actually go toward helping real victims of the opioid epidemic.

“As always, Alabama’s ethics laws prohibit any action taken with a conflict of interest or for personal enrichment,” Marshall said, adding he hopes “subdivisions will work with one another, and in some cases with the State, to implement a thoughtful and meaningful abatement plan that will yield regional benefits.”

Nearly 200,000 U.S. citizens have died from overdoses since 2020, with as much as 70% stemming from the use of opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with opioids playing a role in nearly 70% of those deaths.

Katherine Sullivan, a former principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Programs under the Trump administration, told the Washington Examiner that Alabama’s approach is an about-face rejection of the “harm reduction policies” of President Joe Biden‘s administration, which critics say only put a bandage on the problems plaguing opioid victims.

“As a former drug court judge, good-quality long-term treatment was not available because of a lack of resources and cost to many of our participants,” Sullivan said. “Through these dollars, states can make it clear they reject harm reduction policies of the Biden administration — safe injection sites and crack pipes in vending machines — and instead help families heal from the savagery of addiction.”

While Marshall believes opioid victims can be more adequately helped by a combined effort between the state and local governments, other Republican-led states, including Ohio, have charted a path toward expanding nonprofit organizations overseeing prevention and recovery efforts. Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) in August appointed Alisha Nelson as the first executive director of the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, a private, nonprofit group overseeing prevention and recovery efforts with money from opioid settlements.

OneOhio was sued by a separate group, Harm Reduction Ohio, which resulted in a state Supreme Court ruling this year that the foundation is subject to the state’s open records laws. Harm Reduction Ohio said it filed the suit because OneOhio adopted bylaws stating it would “voluntarily” release only information “it thought the public should know and let the public only into meetings it thought the public should attend.”

“This claim is now invalid,” Harm Reduction Ohio wrote in a May press release announcing the Ohio Supreme Court ruling, which held OneOhio could not operate in secrecy.

Marshall contends that states can better the lives of opioid survivors when the state and its localities work together to get settlement relief back into the hands of those who faced direct harm from the pharmaceuticals.

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“If our cities and counties are willing to come together by regions to develop a larger, long-term plan for their areas, then there could be opportunities for the state to support these endeavors directly,” Marshall wrote.

Read the full letter from Marshall here: