MIDDLETOWN, Ohio — The city of Middletown agreed on Tuesday to accept the material terms of the national opioid settlement agreement involving Kroger.
The council had until Aug. 12 to accept the terms. The city is one of many municipalities and townships across the state that would receive a portion of the $1.2 billion settlement.
“We don’t know the amount we’re going to get until all the communities submit their acceptance of this, and then the monies will be rationed out,” said City Manager Paul Lolli, who later in the meeting submitted his retirement resignation.
The money the city would eventually receive will be put into Middletown’s general fund and would be used for public safety, the courts and/or the city’s health department.
The vote of acceptance comes a week after the city of Fairfield accepted the terms, and based on estimated calculations it would receive more than $91,000 in Kroger’s role in the opioid epidemic. Final amounts would be determined on how many communities accept the settlement agreement.
The payments from the Kroger settlement, which was finalized in June, will be made annually for 11 years. It’s not determined when the first payments would be made.
The Kroger settlement is just one of eight available to Ohio communities through the National Opioid Settlement. Other settlements include Johnson and Johnson, Walmart and Walgreens. In all, the settlements will pay out to communities across the state more than $51 billion.
The $1.2 billion settlement with Kroger “marks another step forward in holding each company that played a role in the opioid epidemic accountable and ensuring hard-hit communities are provided with much-needed resources,” according to a statement on the National Prescription Opiate Litigation.
The country had been hit hard by the opioid epidemic. Since 1999, there have been more than 1 million drug overdoses in the country, with the majority related to opioid use, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though Butler County has seen a decrease in drug overdose deaths in recent years ― the amount of opioid-related deaths have dropped from 260 in 2017 to 184 in 2022 ― opioid-related overdoses made up 84% of all overdose deaths in 2022 in Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Health. More than 4,000 opioid-related deaths were recorded in 2022.
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