As opioid crisis evolves in Kansas, lawsuit settlement funds provide recovery options

Pat George, chairman of the Kansas Fights Addiction Act Grant Review Board, gives an update to the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Jan. 21, 2025. (Kansas Reflector screen capture from Kansas Legislature video)

TOPEKA — After a slow start, Kansas’ opioid settlement funds have reached every county and benefitted tens of thousands of residents seeking help with addiction.

Roughly $340 million in settlement payouts from pharmaceutical companies and distributors accused of furthering the opioid epidemic in the United States will land in Kansas over the course of 18 years.

That pans out to about $15 million per year for addiction prevention and treatment. But no set rate exists for how frequently settlement funds from companies, which include Johnson and Johnson, CVS and Walgreens, are doled out. As determined by the Legislature in 2021 through the Kansas Fights Addiction Act, about 75% of the funds go through a state review board under the Kansas Attorney General’s Office that evaluates where funds should be allocated across the state.

By the end of 2023, the board had allocated about $13 million. Less than $1 million had actually been spent.

Fast forward to 2025, and a different picture has emerged.

In the first two rounds of awards, the Kansas Fights Addiction Act Review Board has approved nearly 60 project grants for 51 different organizations, which ranged from state agencies to faith-based groups to local governments. Preliminary data shows that almost 80,000 people have benefitted from those projects.

Almost 60 new treatment rooms in recovery housing opened, and 28 new residential beds for substance use disorder recovery have been established. More than 4,500 kits of the overdose reversal drug naloxone were distributed, each kit containing two doses.

Looking onward, the grant program’s administrator, Sunflower Foundation, is coordinating a statewide needs analysis to effectively assess gaps in Kansas’ substance use disorder systems.

Seeking treatment

Around the same time funds began to trickle down into projects in April 2024, Jesse Hoppock in Wichita decided it was time to get clean.

His girlfriend had recently moved from Wichita to a treatment center in Topeka. She kept telling Hoppock how great it was. He saw how well she was doing, and at her encouragement, he decided to join her.

Since 2007, Hoppock had been using opiates.

It started with pills — Percocet, a highly addictive painkiller containing oxycodone and acetaminophen. It escalated to heroin, then fentanyl.

“I started killing myself with it,” he said.

Attempts at treatment had come and gone.

“Nothing ever clicked,” he said. “Nothing ever made sense to me.”

He tried to quit cold turkey several times, but each time he would become so ill with withdrawal symptoms that he couldn’t take it. So, he turned back to using.

Hoppock arrived at a Topeka treatment center, which is run by Mirror Inc., a statewide behavioral health and addiction treatment organization.

“I was withdrawing so bad when I got there,” he said. “I couldn’t really function.”

Hoppock was prescribed suboxone, a partial opioid that is used to mitigate opioid dependence often in tandem with other treatments such as behavioral health therapy.

At the Newton-based Mirror, opioid settlement funds were used to expand the exact services used to help Hoppock. Medications for addiction treatment, or MAT, are becoming the standard in the addiction treatment field, said Jason Greever, Mirror’s vice president of treatment services.

“Whereas prior to the opioid epidemic, it did not have the mainstream acceptance it does now,” he said in an interview in late December.

In 2024, Mirror received five more grants. One provides $100,000 to expand its MAT program. Another will use more than $110,000 to hire an adolescent outreach coordinator to heighten awareness of what is available for kids.

“The need for adolescent substance use treatment continues to rise,” Greever said. “ The demand is really there.”

Nearly $160,000 will broaden access to prescription drugs to treat both mental health and physical health issues in an effort to treat “the whole person,” Greever said.

About $280,000 will be directed to people experiencing homelessness or at risk of losing housing. The program will pay for recovery housing for people who complete recovery programs.

“People who are experiencing housing instability, their focus needs to be securing housing,” Greever said.

About $103,000 will fund a new collaboration with law enforcement in Harvey County, where Mirror is headquartered. Peer mentors, people who have endured addiction and help others recover, will respond to law enforcement or hospital calls involving substance use.

“The research says that when individuals are first approached by peers, they become more likely to engage in services,” Greever said.

The pendulum swings

A 2022 report from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment found that from 2011 to 2020 drug overdose deaths in the state rose from 275 deaths to 477, a 73% increase. More than half of the 477 deaths in 2020 were opioid deaths. Of those, more than 60% involved a synthetic opioid, a category that includes fentanyl.

The year that report was released, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 754 drug overdose deaths in Kansas, an almost 60% increase from 2020. Early, unofficial data shows 717 deaths in 2023, and 567 in 2024, a roughly 20% drop.

Funding addiction treatment helps to make a mark, Pat George, the chair of the Kansas Fights Addiction Grant Review Board, told the Senate Ways and Means Committee last week.

“Really, what I’ve found is you don’t have to go very far to find somebody that’s been affected by this disease and people that are on the forefront,” he said.

The opioid crisis keeps coming in phases, said Emily Hage, who is the chief executive officer and president of First Call, a Kansas City nonprofit working across the spectrum of addiction. It’s like a swinging pendulum, she added.

“I worry that funders or people in positions of power might see overdose decreases and think the job is done,” she said.

Steady funding is always a challenge, she said, but settlement funds might provide an opportunity to correct that.

First Call has used opioid settlement dollars to fund harm reduction programs, which include naloxone distribution, fentanyl test strip distribution and connections to recovery resources along with educational programs in Kansas City, Kansas, public schools. They offer youths coping strategies that can act as alternatives to substance use.

“I think it’s a really different conversation than we were raised with, which was ‘just don’t do it,’ ” Hage said.

Taking an approach that involves a broader community rather than just an individual isn’t unique to childhood education. Wichita State University’s director of Health, Outreach, Prevention and Education Services, Marci Young, has used about $119,000 in opioid settlement funds to create a program focused on promoting mental wellness and preventing suicide and overdoses.

The program provides training to community members to help people explore biases and stigma associated with substance use, how to recognize when substances are impacting a person and how to have conversations with someone about their substance use.

“Underneath use, what we find is pain,” Young said. “We find humans that are in a lot of pain and just trying to find a way to cope.”

Sedgwick County, home to Wichita, ranks as one of Kansas’ most vulnerable counties to opioid overdose deaths, according to the 2022 KDHE report. It was second only to Labette County in southeast Kansas.

Hoppock saw that firsthand and, while in treatment, knew he didn’t want to go back to Wichita. Everyone he knew had the same problems he did, he said.

He has held a job at a cellophane plant for about six months and lives in a halfway house where a group of men who are “like brothers” help hold him accountable, he said.

Treatment providers, peer mentors and counselors at Mirror were “heaven-sent,” Hoppock said.

“They didn’t give up,” he said. “They didn’t give up on us.”

Hoppock said he is building back trust with people he lost while in addiction.

“I feel so much better,” he said. “I used to think that I would never want to be sober. Now I can’t see myself ever getting high again.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.