Iowa to get over $70M in opioid settlement with Walgreens, CVS

Tens of millions more dollars are headed to Iowa for opioid recovery and prevention services.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller announced Monday that the state is expected to receive $70.3 million as part of an agreement with CVS and Walgreens for their role in the opioid crisis. The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have agreed to pay a combined $10.7 billion to settle allegations they ignored red flags over opioid painkiller prescriptions and failed to detect and prevent abuse and diversion of the drugs.

“The opioid crisis is the deadliest drug epidemic in American history,” Miller said in a statement. “ … Securing more than $10 billion from CVS and Walgreens nationwide means our states can provide more resources for the treatment and prevention of Opioid Use Disorder to those most in need.”

Opioid-related deaths in Iowa reached a record high 258 in 2021, up 64 percent compared with 2019, with the largest increase occurring among young Iowans under 25, according to the Governor’s Office of Drug Control Policy. Illicit fentanyl was implicated in 83 percent of the most recent deaths, reflecting how widespread powerful synthetic opioids have become, including as an adulterant in other substances for unsuspecting users, according to the office.

Iowa was also part of a $3.1 billion multistate settlement last month with Walmart for the retailer’s similar lack of oversight in dispensing opioids.

Monday’s agreement with CVS and Walgreens brings the total national amount of opioid settlements based to more than $50 billion. Iowa will receive a total of about $320 million over the course of 18 years, the Iowa Attorney General’s Office said.

The terms of the agreements now go to the states for their review. Each state has until the end of the year to join, after which local governments can also sign on to receive shares of settlement funds.

Miller said Iowa intends to join the agreements. Assuming all sign on to the settlement, approximately $35 million will be distributed among Iowa’s 99 counties, said Lynn Hicks, Miller’s chief of staff. Like other opioid settlements, the agreements call for funds to used for prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services.

If there is sufficient sign-on from state, local and tribal governments, payments will begin during the second half of 2023, Miller said.

Currently, more than $19 million has been deposited into Iowa’s opioid settlement fund after two large payments in November from a settlement with Johnson & Johnson and a settlement with three major pharmaceutical distributors. State lawmakers will determine how to spend that money during the upcoming legislative session.

Lawmakers last year approved using $3.8 million in previous settlement funds toward the development of a statewide opioid treatment program by the University of Iowa Health Care. The Iowa Attorney General’s Office launched opioidhelp.iowa.gov in September to help Iowans find treatment centers and other resources across the state.

Rod Courtney of CRUSH (Community Resources United to Stop Heroin) of Iowa said he hopes lawmakers will take a look at providing easier access to Naloxone — an FDA-approved opioid-reversal drug — “and the ability of recovery centers to share and provide those type of services.” Courtney said more treatment beds are needed to “accommodate people sooner.”

CRUSH opened a peer-led recovery community center in June in Cedar Rapids’ Human Services building downtown.

“We are on the front end of the recovery movement and any support we can get monetarily to hire more peer-support coaches and get more boots on the ground in the community are some of the big issues that come to mind,” Courtney said, in addition to focusing more on families and the criminal justice system. “How can we get treatment to the people incarcerated?”

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