Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird has awarded five grants totaling more than $1.6 MILLION to agencies that are helping Iowans with an addition to opioids or programs that warn of the dangers of an opioid addiction.
Manufacturers, distributors, and marketers accused of fueling the opioid epidemic are paying tens of millions of dollars to the State of Iowa as part of a national agreement to settle lawsuits. Bird says $317,000 from Iowa’s opioid settlement fund is going to efforts in north central Iowa.
Samatha Severson of the Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health says the program’s goal is to help inmates so they don’t return to the vicious cycle of an opioid addiction once they’ve done their time and are released.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has received a $919,000 grant for its work to help Polk County inmates as they’re released from jail. A St. Vincent de Paul kiosk set up at the jail a year ago has already helped two-thousand released inmates find ways to get transportation, apply for jobs, get housing and treatment. The organization operates a Sobering Center for adults dealing with addiction. Steve Havemann is CEO of St. Vincent.
Havemann says the people they’re helping get jobs are earning an average wage of well over 18-dollars an hour.
The Warming Shelter in Sioux City is getting $300,000 to help homeless who have substance abuse issues. A $57,000 grant is going to substance abuse prevention programs for the kids who participate in Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Iowa activities. The Johnson County Sheriff’s Department will use its six-thousand dollar grant to buy a “Drug Terminator” machine to incinerate confiscated and expired medications, including opioids. Attorney General Bird is encouraging other organizations to apply for state grants from Iowa’s opioid settlement fund and she plans to announce more recipients before the end of the year. The State of Iowa is expected to receive $365 million from opioid settlements, with $179 million of that going directly to counties. The rest — about $189 million — goes to the state. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for distributing 75% of that and the attorney general’s office is responsible for the other 25%.
