County officials will be meeting to decide how to use $1.1 million the county will receive this year from its share of a national opioid lawsuit settlement.

The county is expected to receive about $800,000 by the end of this month and a total of $1.1 million by the end of the year from its share of the settlement with Cardinal Health, McKesson Corporation, AmerisourceBergen and Johnson & Johnson.

The county will receive $9.5 million over 18 years, its share of the $1.07 billion Pennsylvania will receive from the $26 billion settlement with the pharmaceutical distributors.

The national settlement represented an effort that began in 2018 to hold drug manufacturers, suppliers and sellers accountable for the opioid crisis, which is blamed for more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. over two decades.

The years-long effort was initiated by state and local governments to force the pharmaceutical industry to help pay to address opioid addiction and overdoses.

Drug overdose deaths in the county peaked at 92 in 2017. Following a decline in 2018, overdose deaths climbed to 73 in 2020 and 66 last year. There were 30 in 2013.

Butler County approved its share of the settlement in December.

Last week, county commissioners approved an agreement with the state that governs the use of the settlement money and a certification naming Commissioner Kevin Boozel as one of three people in the state who are authorized to approve transactions using settlement funds.

Boozel, who also is one of 13 board members appointed from across the state to the Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust, said he wants to meet with county departments and agencies that are involved with people in recovery to find out what they need to maintain or expand services. He said he has had some preliminary discussions with departments.

“It’s a great resource for the county to create or maintain programs that are underfunded or create programs that are needed,” Boozel said.

He said he wants to meet with officials from Common Pleas Court, district attorney’s office, public defender’s office, Children and Youth Services, Area Agency on Aging and others. He said he also wants to support an empowerment program at Butler County Community College that helps people overcome barriers to employment.

He said he believes he was named to the trust board and other positions associated with the settlement due to his involvement with the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania. Boozel is the CCAP board chairman.

Boozel said he was involved in the settlement negotiations due to his role with the CCAP.

“I’ve been involved since negotiations started,” Boozel said.

The trust board will receive the settlement money from the drug companies and the state will distribute the funds to counties, which have to agree to use the money in ways dictated in the settlement, he said.

According to the settlement, the funds can be used for a variety of purposes including distributing and training in the use of naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses; distribution, education and awareness training for medication-assisted treatment; connecting people with substance abuse and related mental health issues to treatment and recovery services; addressing the needs of pregnant or parenting women and babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome; and preventing overprescribing of opioids.

“Seventy cents on the dollar goes to treatment or services,” Boozel said.

He said the trust will be used to receive money from other opioid settlements, such as the tentative $450 million multi-state agreement with Endo that Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced last week.

Leslie Osche, chairwoman of the board of county commissioners, said she, too, wants to meet with departments and agencies to decide how to spend the money the county will receive from the $9.5 million settlement.

“I’m quite anxious to sit down with all of them,” Osche said. “Many different ideas have been floated. I’m not aware of all of them. A lot of providers have ideas.”

She said prevention and recovery were services she promised to focus on when she was first elected as a commissioner.

“I’m most interested in that which supports prevention and recovery,” Osche said.

The empowerment program at BC3 helps people with those challenges.

“Employment is key in recovery and prevention. BC3 will play a role,“ she said.

Commissioner Kim Geyer said she wants to use the money to support the Hope is Dope recovery program at BC3 and the college’s empowerment program.

She said she has met with agencies that provide treatment and prevention programs, but the commissioners haven’t decided how to allocate the money.

“We’ve been doing a lot of listening to the community and countywide stakeholders,” Geyer said. “We’ve been fortunate to have agencies such as the Gaiser Center, Grapevine Center and BC3 that all have programs that we are supporting of because they help our county residents who are battling addiction, and need services and recovery.”