OKLAHOMA CITY – Thousands of dollars in grant money will soon be available to multiple southwest Oklahoma entities to fight opioid addiction.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond, chair of the Oklahoma Opioid Abatement Board created in 2020, recently announced that $11 million in grant awards have been approved statewide to 71 cities, counties, school districts and public trusts to help address the opioid crisis.
Recipients in southwest Oklahoma include the City of Lawton, Comanche Public Schools, Comanche County Memorial and Grady County Memorial hospital trusts, the Southwest Oklahoma Development Authority and joint applicants, Jackson County and the City of Altus. Drummond’s press release did not provide grant amounts awarded to each entity but did mention that Comanche County Memorial Hospital Authority received one of the larger grants, $300,000, to establish a women’s and children’s program for opioid-affected families.
Funds will be distributed as soon as recipients return their award agreements. Grants will fund treatment and recovery programs, assistance with co-occurring disorders and mental health issues, opioid abuse education and prevention, proper prescription efforts and strategies to decrease the supply of narcotics across the state.
In addition, applicants that are invited to resubmit for grants include the counties of Caddo, Comanche, Cotton, Grady, Harmon, Jefferson, Kiowa, Stephens and Tillman. Those counties are part of a multicounty coalition that applied for funds. Lawton Public School District has also been invited to reapply.
The current grants are the firstround distribution of money from the abatement fund created through settlements or judgments on behalf of the state related to opioid litigation that involved pharmaceutical supply chain participants, said information at Oklahoma.gov. The fund includes a $12,666,761.70 settlement from Purdue Pharma LP, $2,043,919.73 from Mallinckrodt and an Oklahoma legislative appropriation of $10,220,000.
According to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, there were about 800 opioid-related deaths in Oklahoma in 2022. Of those, fentanyl was responsible for 619 fatal overdoses.
An abatement webinar presented in February 2024 and posted at Oklahoma. gov states that the opioid crisis has occurred in waves. The first wave was driven by the oversupply of prescription opioids. Regulatory controls to stem overprescribing were sought. The second wave began when heroin- related overdose deaths started rising around 2010.
By 2014, synthetic opioids – mainly fentanyl and fentanyl analogs – accounted for most overdose deaths, which marked the third wave. The post noted that, currently, the fourth wave of the opioid crisis is in progress. In Oklahoma, the stimulant fueling this wave is methamphetamine. The co-use of methamphetamine and opioids (namely fentanyl) has caused a significant increase in overdose deaths involving both substances.
“The board took an important step in providing resources to tackle the terrible crisis we are seeing across our state when it comes to fentanyl and other deadly opioids,” Drummond said in the press release. “I am also pleased we will have the opportunity to offer additional grants once applications that did not meet the grant criteria are resubmitted.”