Costa Mesa will direct millions in opioid settlement money to services supporting homeless people with substance abuse disorders.
Councilmembers recently committed to using “past and future” settlement funds to subsidize legal fees as well as prevention and recovery efforts. Costa Mesa is set to receive $4.6 million over 15 years as part of the nationwide legal settlements against drug makers and pharmacy chains from 2021 and 2022. The city has so far received roughly $1.6 million, while accruing $160,000 in attorney fees, according to a staff report presented to the City Council on Jan. 20.
The City Council agreed that Costa Mesa will set aside 85% of settlement funds for direct services, which include emergency housing, transportation, education, job training and case management, and 15% for legal fees.
Costa Mesa filed a lawsuit in 2019 against manufacturers and distributors of opioid drugs to recover treatment expenses and abate future impacts of the epidemic on the local community. Five other Orange County cities, including Fullerton and Irvine, followed with their own litigation.
“This epidemic has personally touched the lives of many members of our community,” former Mayor Katrina Foley said at the time. “It’s time that we take action and put a halt to the lives being destroyed and the economic drain opioid addiction is placing on our community.”
Mayor John Stephens credited Foley and former state Sen. Dave Min for spearheading the lawsuit against the drug makers and returning the money to communities harmed most by the epidemic.
The death of Costa Mesa Fire Captain Mike Kreza in 2018 was one of the catalysts for the city’s lawsuit. Kreza was struck and killed by a driver under the influence of opioids and narcotics while riding his bike in Mission Viejo.
Foley told the Register in 2018 that the model for the OC cities’ lawsuits against drug manufacturers was the litigation against big tobacco companies, which culminated in a 1998 settlement that barred the companies from targeting youths, and required them to pay out $200 billion to the states that sued.
In Orange County, emergency room visits and overdoses stemming from opioid use increased 141% between 2005 and 2015, according to a 2017 report by the OC Health Care Agency. More than 4,000 people were hospitalized, each visit costing on average more than $33,000, the research showed. The drug was responsible for seven in 10 overdose deaths investigated by the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner during that period.
Costa Mesa recorded the fourth-highest number of opioid-related ER visits from 2011 to 2015, the report found. Overdose deaths jumped by 20% in those years.
California is expected to collect at least $4.25 billion from drug companies for their part in fueling the opioid crisis, the Attorney General’s office reported in 2023. State and local governments are owed $425 million from various settlement funds, with $59.5 million for Los Angeles County and its cities, $22.7 million for Orange County and its cities, $17.7 million for Riverside County and its cities, and $12.7 million for San Bernardino County and its cities, according to a 2023 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.