The Mississippi Legislature is set to vote on its own plan to spend opioid settlement money, counting on power it does not yet have to send nearly $60 million across the state.
House and Senate negotiators released the plan late Friday, and both chambers face a Monday deadline to approve final versions of budget bills. The opioid settlement spending plan only loosely resembles the advice of a state council tasked with overseeing most of the funds, which was submitted last winter.
Legislators are moving toward giving themselves the power to spend the settlement money without following the council’s advice. The legislative line item amounts rarely match the council’s recommendations, and would even send money to some organizations the council never vetted.
Lawmakers made updates to seven different appropriations bills — the Attorney General’s Office, the State Department of Health, the Department of Mental Health, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the Institutions of Higher Learning, the Administrative Office of Courts and the Department of Employment Security. Each instructs the agencies to use and distribute the lawsuit money for specific purposes when the next fiscal year starts July 1.
The appropriations will not be final until the House and Senate approve each agency’s budget and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signs the budgets into law.
Mississippi Today turned the list of budget appropriations it identified from Friday’s update into a database, comparing them to the advisory council’s recommendations. The newsroom put in public records requests for applications of every organization that applied for opioid settlement funds last fall, and it linked application narratives it has for the listed line items.
Like every state, Mississippi started receiving tens of millions of dollars in the early 2020s from companies accused of contributing to over a million American overdose deaths. Unlike every state, Mississippi had spent less than $1 million as of last fall on addressing that crisis — the purpose of these funds.
The Legislature controls 85% of Missisisppi’s opioid settlement funds, expected to total about $421 million by 2040. For three and a half years after the state received its first payment, as others across the country sent their money to address the addiction crisis, the funds Mississippi lawmakers controlled have only been used to pay attorneys fees.
Last spring, the Legislature created a law to spend most of the money it controls and set up an advisory council to solicit, review and recommend projects to address opioid addiction. Then, lawmakers were supposed to review those recommendations.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who has managed the funds since 2021, led the advisory council and carried out that plan. She sent the council’s list of recommendations to legislative leaders in December, highlighting that the state government had just over $100 million of opioid settlement funds it could use.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch speaks during the first meeting of the Mississippi Opioid Settlement Advisory Council at the Walter Sillers Building in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday, July 9, 2025. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayWhile Fitch and state lawmakers set aside some opioid settlement funds for the Legislature to use on any non-addiction purpose it sees fit, last year’s law instructed that lawmakers spend most of the money with the advice of the advisory council — only permitting legislators to accept or reject its recommendations.
But Friday’s updated budget bills show lawmakers want more decision-making power. The plans released frequently modify the advisory council’s recommended amount and send money to fund efforts the council hasn’t considered. While current laws don’t permit that, lawmakers are close to passing a bill that would create power to modify how much funding the council recommends.
Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and lead sponsor of the reform bill, told Mississippi Today on Thursday it was her hope to have that law enacted before the Legislature finalizes this year’s opioid settlement distributions. It still needs to pass the House and be signed by the governor before it would become law.
The bill’s current version still instructs the Legislature to spend all addiction money on projects reviewed by the advisory council. However, in the Department of Employment Security’s budget bill, lawmakers instruct the agency to use $1 million of abatement settlement funds to pilot an addiction recovery-to-work program, even though the agency never submitted an application to the council. Legislators are also proposing to fund other projects that never applied for money.
It’s unclear how that would be permitted under Mississippi’s current or proposed laws. Boyd did not answer multiple calls from Mississippi Today inquiring about that on Saturday.
Lawmakers also propose sending $4.5 million of addiction settlement funds to community mental health centers, which had expressed concerns about their operating costs.
If these plans are enacted, the Legislature would send out over $50 million the settlements require to be spent to address addiction and over $9 million lawmakers gave themselves the power to use for any public purpose. Of the unrestricted money, $5 million would go to fund clinical trials for the psychedelic drug ibogaine.
Lawmakers’ plans for funds that must be spent to address addiction are mostly tied to applications the advisory council reviewed and scored last fall. But there are some notable exceptions. In addition to the employment department funding, lawmakers plan to send $500,000 for an organization called Hope Squad to do youth opioid prevention outreach. But it’s not clear what this organization is, where it’s based, and how it plans to prevent Mississippi overdoses.
Another project the Legislature is looking to fund that went unlisted in the advisory council’s review is a Canton-based nonprofit called Finally First. This organization is set to receive $250,000 from the Legislature for a school addiction prevention program in four central Mississippi counties.
But the advisory council did receive an application from that organization. Mississippi Today obtained Finally First’s proposal when it submitted its November public records request to the Attorney General’s Office. It’s unclear why the application was never scored by the council, and Attorney General Office spokesperson MaryAsa Lee did not answer the newsroom’s call Saturday.
Comelia Walker, Finally First’s chief executive officer, said she submitted her application well before the council’s deadline. She said that while she’s glad the Legislature is set to fund her nonprofit’s application, it’s disappointing to learn that the council didn’t fulfill its responsibility to review every opioid settlement application.
“That kind of hurts,” she said. “Because that means we didn’t even have an opportunity initially.”
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