KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – The City of Kalamazoo has taken emergency action to get their share of the National Opioid settlement valued at $28 billion dollars.
City Attorney Clyde Robinson said he was getting the forms from their attorneys as Commissioners were holding their last meeting of the year Monday night, and they have to be filed before the board meets again.
As a rough guess, he estimates the city could get as much as $150,000 a year for 18 years.
However, one stipulation in the tentative deal is that communities spend the money on opioid related expenses.
“It would be for the care treatment and other programs, including reimbursement for past programs and expenditures, designed to address the misuse and abuse of opioid products,” Robinson said.
Commissioner Chris Praedel says Health Department statistics show a 55% increase in local overdoses at the height of the crisis in 2017.
“They said an additional 1,865 years of life would have been lived had these individuals not passed from opioid addiction in just that one-year period,” Praedel said.
Robinson says a lot of different factors will determine how the money is divided between the hundreds of communities involved in the class action suit.
Kalamazoo County Government is also a plaintiff in the suit.
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