Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced Thursday that the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe will each receive one-time distributions of funds from the state’s settlements with opioid manufacturers.
The Southern Utes will receive more than $1.27 million, and the Ute Mountain Utes will receive more than $740,000 for drug treatment, recovery, prevention and education programs.
The funds are drawn from the state’s share, about 10% of the total settlement amount. Of the remaining funds, 60% will go to regional councils, 20% to local governments and 10% to opioid-related infrastructure needs statewide.
The tribes must use the funds for accepted opioid abatement purposes that are outlined in the joint framework the Colorado Department of Law and local governments signed in August 2021.
The state has secured over $740 million in monetary damages from the companies that manufactured and distributed prescription opioid pharmaceuticals.
The Colorado Opioid Abatement Council oversees settlement funds and makes sure the distributions comply with settlement terms and joint framework. So far, close to $43 million has been distributed to 19 regional opioid abatement councils and local governments to combat each community’s opioid crisis.
Earlier this year, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health awarded Colorado with one of its inaugural Excellence in the Application of Opioid Litigation Principles Awards for the state’s planning and regional collaboration.
“Tribal communities suffered some of the worst consequences of the opioid crisis of any population in the country,” Weiser said in a news release. “No amount of money will be enough to address the outsized impact of the opioid crisis on tribal communities, but the funds from Colorado’s share of opioid settlements will provide critical resources to the Ute Mountain Utes and Southern Utes to save lives.”
Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Chairman Manuel Heart said the tribe likely will use the funds to build up resources for people returning from inpatient treatment.
“It won’t have a huge impact, but it does help,” Heart said of the funds.
He said the tribe is also in the process of working with the Southern Utes to build an inpatient treatment facility in the region.
“It's here, we know it's there, and substance abuse is something that's faced a lot of tribes across this country,” Heart said. “This opioid settlement is going to really help out tribes and different programs to help out their tribal members that are facing these challenges with substance abuse.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com and cczarnecki@the-journal.com
