Colorado will see additional $150 million in opioid crisis settlement funds

Colorado will receive more than $150 million in settlement funds from CVS and Walgreens for the role the companies played in the opioid crisis, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Monday. 

The agreement between the two companies and a bipartisan group of attorneys general secures over $10 billion in settlement funding for the states impacted by the opioid crisis across the country. CVS will pay a total of $5 billion while Walgreens will pay $5.7 billion.  

“The companies that helped create and fuel the opioid crisis need to step up to fix it,” Weiser said in a news release. “That means providing significant resources to increase treatment and recovery services and changing their business practices to make sure this never happens again. All in, Colorado will receive more than $700 million from national opioid settlements to save lives and help the people in our state experiencing opioid addiction recover.”

The settlement comes just a month after Colorado also secured $40 million in settlement funding from Walmart for its role in the opioid crisis. All three companies are also required to monitor, report and share data around suspicious activity relating to any opioid prescriptions as part of the agreement. 

All of the funding Colorado gets related to opioid crisis settlements will be distributed according to the same framework the state and local governments agreed to in August 2021, going toward prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery services. 

States will now have the chance to review the agreement’s terms through the end of the year before the agreement goes to local governments for a chance to sign on in the first quarter of 2023.