Mississippi lawmakers removed a provision from an opioid settlement reform bill Thursday that would have guaranteed tens of millions of dollars from drug company lawsuits would be used to address addiction.
Six negotiators unanimously agreed to a proposal that would change how the Legislature spends national opioid settlement money. The plan goes to the full House and Senate for consideration in the next few days.
Since 2022, the state has received over $130 million from lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies that contributed to over 10,000 Mississippi overdose deaths since 1999. The state is expected to receive about $421 million by 2040.
Every state is receiving opioid settlement money, and every state besides Mississippi had spent at least $3 million of it to prevent more overdose deaths by last fall. The Legislature controls 85% of Mississippi’s settlements. So far, it has only spent its share on legal fees.
Across the state, 147 towns, cities and counties control the other 15% of Mississippi’s money. Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote a contract and a letter that said they could use the money on any public purpose without reporting their spending. Many did.
Of the at least $15.5 million the local governments had received by last summer, Mississippi Today found that over $4 million went to general expenses, and less than $1 million was used to prevent overdoses.
Soon after the newsroom’s investigation, House Public Health and Human Services Committee Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, said he would like to pass a law that encouraged local governments to spend money addressing addiction. Earlier this month, he and the House proposed amending the state’s opioid settlement laws to require all local money to be spent on public health overdose prevention measures.
Rep. Sam Creekmore, R-New Albany, discusses opioid settlement legislation during an interview at the Mississippi Capitol on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayBut Thursday’s agreement between the three senators and three representatives, including Creekmore, removed any mention of how local governments should spend the money. Creekmore said he couldn’t get agreement from the other lawmakers, and the bill would’ve gone away if he didn’t continue moving it forward.
If the bill passes without the local government restrictions, cities and counties can continue spending money paid out by the drug companies on non-addiction purposes. The local governments are expected to receive over $40 million more by the time all the money is distributed.
While Creekmore said he would’ve liked to include guidance to encourage cities and counties on how to spend the lawsuit funds, he and the other negotiators worked hard on other parts of the bill.
“I’ll stand with them on it,” he said. “Did I want to? No. But at the end of the day, I thought the bill is as good as we can get.”
Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford, is lead sponsor of the bill and also helped negotiate the latest provisions. She said the lawmakers sought advice about what they could and couldn’t do with reforming the local settlement provisions from their legal council in Fitch’s office.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch listens as agenda items are discussed during the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council meeting at the Carroll Gartin Justice Building in Jackson, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayMaryAsa Lee, a spokesperson for the office, didn’t immediately answer a call or respond to a voicemail asking about the legal provisions the office suggested.
Boyd echoed statements the attorney general’s office has provided to Mississippi Today in the past — the money going to local governments was intended to compensate them for addiction expenses over the past two decades. While the national opioid settlements allow for a portion to not be spent on addressing addiction, the lawyers who negotiated the agreement discouraged states from doing that.
“The money that went back to them, that went to the cities and the counties, was for money they had already spent,” Boyd said. “It’s not abatement, it’s reimbursement.”
She said she’s more focused on the larger portion of opioid settlement money the Legislature controls — expected to be over $350 million by the time Mississippi receives all its payments. Most of that money is overseen by an advisory council and must be spent on addiction, but Fitch and the Legislature allow for about $63 million to be spent for general purposes.
The current version of Boyd’s bill gives the Legislature more power to adjust the advisory council’s recommendations, strengthens ethics rules to prevent potential conflicts of interest among council members and instructs the council to contract with a third-party group to improve Missisisppi’s opioid settlement distribution and evaluation. It instructs Fitch’s office to use some of the $63 million for the third-party contract.
Boyd said she hopes these changes will lead to Mississippi’s opioid settlement money preventing more overdose deaths.
“What we’re trying to see is how do we have a big impact for the people and how do you make a difference,” she said.
James Moore, a Hattiesburg recovery advocate who lost his son to an overdose, is a member of the advisory council with Boyd and Creekmore. During the council’s last meeting, he called for many of the reforms that are still in the bill. He said he’s happy to see them moving closer to possibly becoming law.
James Moore poses next to a photo of himself and his son, Jeffrey Moore, at Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Hattiesburg. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayBut he said he’s disappointed that lawmakers are insisting local money can be spent for anything other than what Mississippi argued it should be in its lawsuits against opioid companies, what Fitch’s office first said it would be used for — addressing the public health epidemic that killed his son.
If the lawmakers negotiated this deal at a public meeting, Moore said he thinks they wouldn’t have removed that provision. Too many families torn apart by the crisis, like his, would have shown up to encourage them to preserve that requirement.
“I can’t imagine anybody in the room that’d be willing to look at survivors and families and parents and say, ‘We still ought to be able to do what we want to with this, even if it’s fix a pothole.’”
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