MANTEO, N.C. — Fentanyl and other opioids have taken away thousands of lives, impacting millions of Americans in one way or another.
Drugmakers and pharmacy chains have been forced to pay millions of dollars in opioid settlements to North Carolina alone to help repair the damage done.
Now counties across the state are trying to figure out how to put that money to use.
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Dare County is offering some lessons.
The county is slated to receive $3.4 million over an 18-year period that began in 2023. It could not come soon enough.
Out of the 16 overdose deaths in Dare County in 2022, 14 were from fentanyl.
The funding has already paid for new positions like an overdose response coordinator, a new recovery court case manager and wider distribution of naloxone and fentanyl testing strips.
In the coming months, the county hopes to launch a new mobile vehicle to provide wider access to services.
“We have doubled the amount of naloxone that we have gotten out in the community over the past year and we are going to be starting mobile harm reduction services,” said Roxana Ballinger, health education and outreach manager for the Dare County Department of Health. “That will enable us to be mobile and go wherever the need is.”
Ballinger is also the co-chair of the Saving Lives Task Force. It’s a role that took on new meaning for her when her son David died in 2022 in Hampton Roads from an overdose after he struggled with addiction for years.
“I definitely could relate to all of those mothers out there who have lost a child to overdose," she said. "It’s not easy, but it does help me to understand them a whole lot more."
Ballinger also advised a task force formed in Currituck County to determine how to spend the more than $1 million that county will receive.
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A task force gave a report to county commissioners earlier this month. It reported there were 20 overdose deaths in the county from 2020 to 2022.
Narcan was distributed 96 times, which officials said is likely an undercount because a lot of use is not reported.
They’re proposing steps such as adding post-overdose response teams and early intervention programs to combat the issue.
Currituck County Manager Ike McRee said while it was hard to calculate a financial loss to the county due to the crisis, the human cost to those impacted is real.
“It is important to them and to our community that we do those things that we can to be able to get them out of the grips of addiction and help them return to a happy and productive life in the county,” McRee said.
Both counties said collaboration is key not only between agencies within counties, but also across county to get a better foothold in the fight against opioid abuse.
