Members of Mississippi’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council are scrambling to ensure millions of dollars they oversee can actually be used for awarded addiction-response projects.
State lawmakers earlier this year awarded around $50 million in opioid settlement money — payments made by the companies that contributed to the overdose deaths of more than 10,000 Mississippians. The contracts between the state and the awardees say that the selected organizations will be reimbursed for every three months of work.
The agreements were supposed to go into effect on July 1, but some organizations that were selected to receive the money haven’t signed them yet because the upfront project costs would be too high.
The Legislature awarded the north Mississippi community mental health center Communicare $5.2 million to build a new pediatric emergency and long-term residential treatment center in Panola County — the first of its kind in the state. But Melody Madaris, the executive director of Communicare and a member of Mississippi’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council, told other members at a meeting on Tuesday that with the current contract setup, her organization couldn’t start work on the center.
“There’s no way that our agency can purchase that building and wait for the reimbursement for an entire quarter,” she said at the meeting. “If we were capable of doing that, we would’ve already done it.”
Madaris told Mississippi Today after the meeting that she has yet to sign Communicare’s opioid settlement contract because of this dilemma. Mississippi Deputy Attorney General Doug Miracle, who filled in as council chair for Attorney General Lynn Fitch on Tuesday, told the other members that less than half of the grant agreements Fitch’s office was responsible for had been signed and returned by applicants.
Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and a council member, said she also heard from recipients that waiting three months could prevent them from ever starting their addiction response work.
“It’s a difficult issue when it’s quarterly, especially these small nonprofits that we want to be able to work with,” Boyd said at the meeting. “They’re doing great stuff, many of them.”
Nicole Boyd, a Republican state senator from Oxford, at Mississippi’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council meeting on July 21, 2026 Credit: Allen Siegler / Mississippi TodayThe $50 million of legislative awards is the first time Mississippi elected officials have used the portion of opioid lawsuit money the settlements say must be used to address addiction. It’s the only state in the country that hadn’t spent any of that share by 2024, according to a KFF Health News investigation.
Boyd said she was getting texts from people with applicant organizations about the reimbursements as the meeting was happening.
“I think it is a larger problem than the council realizes at this point,” she said to the other members.
In a roll call vote, the majority of members agreed to allow opioid settlement grant recipients who applied in 2025 to propose alternative fund disbursement arrangements to their contracts, and the council would review each of those requests at the next meeting, which Deputy Attorney General Doug Miracle said would take place in the next two weeks.
Miracle voted against the motion. He told members that opening up changes to the council-approved contracts for this cycle could further delay Mississippi from using opioid settlement money to address addiction, including for the applicants who can manage the 90-day reimbursement arrangement.
“The packages went out,” he said. “People have been told what the rules of the road were, and they’re returning them.”
Council members did not specify how applicants should go about requesting these changes.
The Attorney General Office Communications Director MaryAsa Lee did not respond to an emailed question asking for further clarity. Miracle declined a Mississippi Today interview after the meeting.
Hence then, the article about mississippi opioid settlement addiction response projects could face further delays was published today ( ) and is available on Mississippi Today ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Mississippi opioid settlement addiction response projects could face further delays )
Also on site :
- 'Ted Lasso' Star Reveals Surprisingly Emotional Way the Show 'Saved' Him: 'Infectious to Play a Character Who Sees the Best in People'
- Amazon’s ‘Whimsical' Highland Cow Solar Light Is a Budget-Friendly Decor Upgrade Oozing With Cottagecore Charm
- Israeli forces close entrances to Faqqu& 039;a village northeast of Jenin, convert two homes into military outposts