My state is conquering the opioid crisis. Other states need to do the same
Most people understand that our country is facing a crisis of opioid addiction and deaths. To combat this, you need proven solutions and resources. Yet, a lot of the money that is supposed to be spent combating that crisis is instead sitting idle in government bank accounts.
This isn't taxpayer money; it's part of a legal settlement that companies who were accused of recklessly fueling the opioid crisis agreed to pay to provide some relief to those communities ravaged by addiction. In late January, Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family agreed to increase the amount they're paying to $7.4 billion. But many states and localities are sitting on millions that they seem oddly hesitant to spend.
Every state has money to distribute. Since 2021, companies involved in manufacturing and distributing legal opioids, along with some pharmacies, have agreed to pay approximately $50 billion in total settlements.
I was governor for eight years in New Hampshire, and the smartest thing to combat this crisis was to not hesitate. We don't have all the answers regarding addiction, but we've made progress with the rest of the country has stalled.
When I took office in 2017, we had the second-highest opioid overdose death rate in the country. Since that time, our overdose death rate has dropped over 30%, while the national average continued to climb. We now rank twenty-second, and we have the lowest overdose death rate in New England. (Recently, for the first time in years, the national opioid death rate has begun to decline.)
When I took office, heroin and opioid pills were cheap; those who tried to recover couldn't get help. Waiting lists for treatment were more than six weeks long. I went right to the people on the front lines of the crisis to find the answers. They knew that addicts could best be reached right after an overdose. If there was no readily available treatment, their patterns would just continue.
Two essential changes helped us lower our rate. We changed our approach to treatment beginning in 2019 through what we call The Doorway program. This new system design was founded on one critical thesis, rural access to care was the greatest barrier to functional addicts. Addiction rates were far greater in rural areas than anything seen in our small cities, but all the resources and treatment programs were located in the cities and out of reach of the average citizen.
With nine regional Doorway locations, help is always within an hour's reach for anyone in the state. The program is funded primarily through the federal State Opioid Response (SOR) grant, and has let us expand the use of medicine, peer support and techniques for prevention.
In the first six months, more than 3,200 people sought help through the Doorway, and monthly client numbers continue to rise. By destigmatizing addiction and simplifying the process for seeking help, the program helped cut the numbers of overdoses and deaths.
Police officers and treatment experts can't be everywhere all the time, so we also invested over $3 million to put naloxone, which can reverse the effects of opioids in someone who has overdosed, just about everywhere we could. Early in my administration, we decided that if our streets were to be flooded with deadly drugs like fentanyl, we needed to flood them with life-saving opioid reversal medicines.
We then changed our laws to ensure that all first responders, whether they be fire or police, could administer life-saving naloxone, without fear of unnecessary training or liability concerns.
When I took office in 2017, we had the second-highest opioid overdose death rate in the country. Since that time, our overdose death rate has dropped over 30%, while the national average continued to climb.
New Hampshire also became the first state to install NaloxBoxes in public spaces, for first responders, but also anyone who might overdose. Our Good Samaritan laws also allowed numerous instances where naloxone was administered by bystanders before emergency services arrived and directly saved lives.
Ken Trogdon, whose nonprofit HarborPath works with states and organizations to distribute naloxone where it's most needed, emphasizes its importance. "As a nation, we need to get this life-saving drug within arm's length of everyone who might potentially need it. Unfortunately, that means we basically need it everywhere," he says.
To date, states have received approximately $6 billion of the $50 billion they are slated to receive from opioid settlements. Yet reports suggest that as much as a third or even half of these funds remain unspent. That's not good enough. I implore governors and mayors across the country to not hesitate, think creatively, and find results-driven solutions similar to what we put here in New Hampshire to increase access to life-saving care. The strategies we've implemented are working, and no one across America can afford for this fight to be halfhearted.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Boston Globe
Jillian Sackler, philanthropist who defended husband's legacy, dies at 84
Arthur Sackler died in 1987 — nine years before the opioid OxyContin was marketed by the company as a powerful painkiller. Shortly after his death, his estate sold his share of the company to his billionaire brothers, Raymond and Mortimer, for $22.4 million. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The company's misleading advertising claim that OxyContin was nonaddictive prompted doctors to overprescribe it beginning in the 1990s. The proliferation of the medication ruined countless lives of people who became dependent on it. Advertisement In 2021, the company proposed a bankruptcy settlement in which members of the Sackler family agreed to pay $4.2 billion over nine years to resolve civil claims related to the opioid crisis. In return, they sought immunity from future lawsuits. In 2024, the US Supreme Court struck down that deal. A revised settlement was reached in 2025, with the Sacklers and Purdue agreeing to pay $7.4 billion without receiving immunity. The first payment, within three years, included $1.5 billion from the Sacklers and nearly $900 million from Purdue. Advertisement But the backlash from the crisis prompted universities and cultural institutions — including the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — to obliterate the Sackler name from programs, buildings, and galleries, and to declare that they would no longer accept any philanthropy from the family. Jillian Sackler — a British native who was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 for her philanthropic work — mounted a concerted publicity campaign to absolve her husband of any complicity or culpability, repeatedly reminding the public that he had died long before the scandal erupted. While she stopped short of saying that the drug was the 'root cause' of the opioid crisis, she accused the company of misleading advertising. She told The Guardian that the other members of the family 'have a moral duty to help make this right and to atone for any mistakes made.' As for Arthur, she added: 'I think he would not have approved of the widespread sale of OxyContin.' The couple were avid art collectors and patrons. One art scholar described Arthur Sackler as 'a modern Medici.' The couple was associated with major cultural and academic institutions like the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution; the Sackler Wing at the Metropolitan Museum; the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University (now part of the Harvard Art Museums); the Arthur M. Sackler Sciences Center at Clark University; and the Arthur M. Sackler Center for Health Communications and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences, both at Tufts University. After Arthur Sackler died, his wife continued his philanthropic agenda. Donations from his estate and insurance benefits helped finance the Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University, the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia at the National Academy of Sciences, and Studio International, an art magazine. Their name was removed from some, but not all, of those institutions. Advertisement Gillian Lesley Tully was born on Nov. 17, 1940, in Stoke-on-Trent, in central England south of Manchester. She changed the spelling of her first name when she moved to the United States to be with Arthur Sackler, whom she met in 1967 when he was visiting London; they married in 1980. Her father, Kenneth Tully, worked at Midland Bank (now HSBC UK). He married a colleague, Doris Queenie-Gillman Smith. Ms. Sackler had a younger brother, Brian Tully, who died in 2019, leaving her no immediate survivors except for Arthur Sackler's children from an earlier marriage. Among them is Elizabeth Sackler, a philanthropist who has described the estimated $13 billion amassed by her aunts and cousins during the opioid crisis as 'morally abhorrent.' Jillian Sackler attended New York University. The couple moved into a home on Park Avenue in Manhattan, where she continued to live after her husband's death. In her role as president and CEO of the Dame Jillian and Dr. Arthur M. Sackler Foundation for the Arts, Sciences and Humanities, Sackler referred to the other branches of her husband's family as the 'OxySacklers.' In an opinion piece in The Washington Post in 2019, she wrote that her husband had been smeared through 'guilt by association.' Advertisement 'Neither Arthur nor his heirs had anything to do with the manufacture or marketing of OxyContin,' she asserted. 'Suggestions that his philanthropy is now somehow tainted are simply false.' She added: 'Arthur is not here to answer back, but I can tell you that blaming him for OxyContin's marketing, or for any other wrongdoing by the pharmaceutical industry, is as ludicrous as blaming the inventor of the mimeograph for email spam.' This article originally appeared in
New York Times
6 days ago
- New York Times
Jillian Sackler, Philanthropist Who Defended Husband's Legacy, Dies at 84
Jillian Sackler, an arts philanthropist who struggled to preserve the reputation of her husband, Arthur, by distinguishing him from his two younger Sackler brothers and their descendants, whose aggressive marketing and false advertising on behalf of their pharmaceutical company, Purdue Pharma, triggered the opioid epidemic, died on May 20 in Manhattan. She was 84. Her death, in a hospital, was from esophageal cancer, said Miguel Benavides, her health proxy. Dr. Arthur Sackler, a psychiatrist and researcher who became a pioneer in medical marketing, bought Purdue Frederick, originally based in New York City, in the 1950s and gave each of his brothers a one-third share. They incorporated the company as Purdue Pharma in 1991. (Its headquarters are now in Stamford, Conn.) Dr. Sackler died in 1987 — nine years before the opioid OxyContin was marketed by the company as a powerful painkiller. Shortly after his death, his estate sold his share of the company to his billionaire brothers, Raymond and Mortimer, for $22.4 million. The company's misleading advertising claim that OxyContin was nonaddictive prompted doctors to overprescribe it beginning in the 1990s. The proliferation of the medication ruined countless lives of people who became dependent on it. In 2021, the company proposed a bankruptcy settlement in which members of the Sackler family agreed to pay $4.2 billion over nine years to resolve civil claims related to the opioid crisis. In return, they sought immunity from future lawsuits. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Yahoo
Elliot to operate The Doorway in Manchester starting July 1
Elliot Health System announced Thursday it has been selected to operate the Manchester location of The Doorway, a statewide program that connects people to treatment and recovery services for substance use. The transition will officially take place on July 1. The Doorway is a statewide network coordinated by the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), with nine regional hubs offering access to screening, evaluation, treatment options and ongoing recovery support. The Greater Manchester location is currently located at 60 Rogers St., Suite 210. 'Assuming leadership of The Doorway aligns with our mission,' said Dr. Gregory Baxter, president & CEO of Elliot Health System, 'and we are ready to strengthen this critical access point, enhance coordination and ensure every person who reaches out is met with timely, effective support.' Officials at Elliot Health System said that under the leadership of Annette Escalante, director of substance use services, The Doorway will be 'positioned within a continuum of services' that includes behavioral health, crisis stabilization, and care coordination, 'making it easier for individuals to get the help they need at any stage of recovery.' Martha Dodge, senior vice president and chief nursing executive said Elliot is 'preparing to serve approximately 1,500 individuals annually, and we are committed to ensuring each person receives timely, respectful, and effective care.' For the past five years, the state has received about $28 million annually to address substance use disorders. The Doorway is part of that response. In 2024, New Hampshire's two largest cities recorded the lowest number of overdoses in a year since the COVID pandemic. There were 710 suspected overdoses in Manchester and Nashua in 2024 — 526 of those occurred in Manchester, 184 in Nashua, according to data released by American Medical Response, which provides ambulance services to both cities. Sixty-six overdoses last year were fatal — 46 in Manchester, 20 in Nashua. Nashua recorded both the lowest number of suspected opioid overdoses and lowest number of suspected opioid deaths in one year since AMR began tracking the data in 2015. pfeely@
