Where experts say NJ should spend opioid settlement funds / NJ Spotlight / June 17, 2025

By Lilo H. Stainton

Expand housing-first programs, where sobriety is not a prerequisite for shelter. Integrate harm reduction strategies, like distribution of the opioid-reversal agent naloxone into emergency rooms and community clinics. Train more treatment providers in best-practice strategies and connect more people with peer counselors and family support services.

These are just some of the recommendations contained in a opens in a new window108-page strategic plan released last week by New Jersey’s Opioid Recovery and Remediation Advisory Council, a nine-member panel that includes treatment and recovery experts, social service leaders and people who have experienced addiction.

The council’s vision is a state in which addiction is seen as a health condition and everyone has equitable access to treatment and recovery services, while having basic life needs met. Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration has largely supported this mission, although the governor’s budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year eliminates funding for at least one of the action items, a long-standing housing-first program in Camden.

The council was formed in 2023 to advise the state on how to invest its share of New Jersey’s payout from national opioid lawsuit settlements, a total of $1.3 billion over 15 years to be paid by drugmakers, marketers and distributors who flooded the nation with highly addictive medications. opens in a new windowHalf of that $1.3 billion is going to state government while the other half is being distributed by the counties and about 250 municipalities under the opens in a new windowsettlements’ terms.

“While no amount of settlement payments can undo the harm and human toll of the opioid crisis, we can and must ensure New Jersey uses the funding wisely to help our residents and communities recover,” Department of Human Services Commissioner Sarah Adelman, who chairs the state advisory group, said in a statement.

Basics of the spending plan

Created based on extensive input from people who have experienced addiction and those who work in recovery programs, the plan will guide state spending and can also be a resource for county and local governments, Adelman said. The state has already distributed more than $120 million from its share of the money, including nearly $3.7 million announced last week for nine nonprofits that will develop temporary housing with case management services for at least 450 people who are leaving drug treatment programs.

“This is about saving lives. We are committed to offering services and supports that serve as a bridge to permanent housing for adults in recovery,” Human Services Deputy Commissioner for Health Services Valerie Mielke said in a press release announcing the opens in a new windownew contracts.

Officials at the state Department of Health, which has embraced a similar strategy in its responses to addiction, said drug deaths remain a primary cause of maternal mortality in New Jersey.

“Through settlement fund investments to date, we have funded Harm Reduction Centers in every county, deployed testing and wound care kits, and are standing up tools to connect individuals to treatment around the clock. To continue to make strides, sustained investments in evidence-based harm reduction strategies, rapid access to lifesaving treatment like medications for opioid use disorder, and a nimble response to changing needs are crucial,” Dalya Ewais, health department communications director, said in an email.

The state advisory council’s strategic plan includes four basic targets for investment: safe, supportive housing; harm reduction services to save lives and reduce disease; proven treatment services; and better coordinated wrap-around programs, including transportation and legal support. Money should go to evidence-driven, community-based programs, it said, not law enforcement efforts to search people and seize drugs.

Grassroots support

These goals largely align with the priorities outlined by a group of grassroots advocates — all with direct experience with addiction — who joined forces to create a opens in a new windowseparate settlement-spending road map to guide county and local officials. opens in a new windowReports filed with the state show that many communities are on board with investing in proven harm reduction and treatment programs.

Other municipalities used the money for law-enforcement initiatives and the state comptroller’s office, charged with identifying waste and fraud, has investigated Irvington’s use of settlement funds for a series of public concerts. opens in a new windowIrvington leaders recently went to court to block the release of the comptroller’s report.

Elizabeth Burke Beaty, co-director of the Not One More NJ campaign to end overdoses, and founder of Sea Change, a recovery organization in Ocean County, told NJ Spotlight News that with the two spending plans now released “we, the people directly impacted, will anticipate that municipalities and counties will now allocate and distribute their settlement funds to housing, harm reduction and other evidence-based programs in a clear and transparent way and we will certainly continue to monitor this closely.”

Barriers to success remain, the strategic plan notes. Stigma around drug use keeps people from getting help, it said, while a workforce shortage limits treatment slots.

opens in a new windowDrug-use deaths have declined in recent years both nationwide and in New Jersey, especially among white people, but fatalities still topped 2,800 in 2023, the most recent year for full opens in a new windowstate data. Drug-related deaths among Black and Hispanic people have been slower to decline, according to the data, although that is now starting to change.

The strategic plan highlights the state’s drug-death disparities by race, noting Black residents experience fatal overdoses at more than twice the rate of white residents. The risk of death is highest for people who are homeless, incarcerated or suffering from severe mental illness, according to the plan. It also notes geographic variation, with fatal overdose rates ranging from 15.5 in 100,000 in Morris County to 73.3 in 100,000 in Atlantic County.

Keeping an eye on the money

The council’s plan outlines methods to track the progress of the state’s investments, adjusting the strategy as needed to meet the underlying goals and respond to community feedback. These include getting more people into treatment — participation dipped during the pandemic and has yet to recover, it notes — and connecting them with support services. Continuing to bring down fatalities, including among Black and Hispanics people, is also a priority.

A number of barriers to success remain, the strategic plan notes. Stigma around drug use keeps people from getting help, it said, while a workforce shortage limits treatment slots and limited coordination among support services leaves some people without basic needs met. Age restrictions and ID requirements also prevent people from getting care, according to the plan, and it is not clear how many treatment programs accept Medicaid, the publicly funded health insurance program for people with limited income.

Under Murphy, a Democrat in his final year in office, New Jersey has embraced some of the program models championed in the strategic plan, like harm reduction and housing first. But concerns about a “tight budget” led Murphy to eliminate several previously funded initiatives in the $58.3 billion annual spending plan he proposed for the fiscal year that begins July 1, which opens in a new windowlawmakers are now working to finalize.

The cuts include opens in a new windoweliminating all funding for a long-standing housing-first program run by the Camden Coalition, a nonprofit health collaborative, which already saw opens in a new windowsupport for the program cut in half under the current state budget. Camden Coalition staff said losing state support entirely could force the program to close, leaving more than 50 residents without critical support services.

Kathleen Noonan, president and CEO of the Camden Coalition, said her organization is grateful to the state opioid spending advisory board for including housing first in its list of priorities. “The Camden Coalition has run a Housing First program for almost 10 years, and although Governor Murphy zeroed out are funding Majority Leader Greenwald and Senator Cruz-Perez are championing restoration,” she told NJ Spotlight News in an email.