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<\/p>\nIn addition to Buffalo, five major municipalities in Erie County have received money to address opioid addition, which has killed hundreds in their communities. Between them, they’ve spent less than half of the funds. Some of what they have spent misses the mark.<\/p>\n
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Lancaster Town Hall. Photo: Adam Smith-Perez.<\/p>\n
Five of Erie County\u2019s largest municipalities have spent less than half of the $417,990 they\u2019ve been allotted by a state agency in the past three years to fight opioid addiction. In that time, at least 386 people died of overdoses in those communities.<\/p>\n
The towns of Lancaster and Tonawanda haven\u2019t spent any of the money they\u2019ve received. The Town of Amherst has used only a portion of its funds.\u00a0 Cheektowaga town officials provided an incomplete accounting of the town\u2019s spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The City of Lackawanna has spent most of its money \u2014 derived from settlements to lawsuits against opioid manufacturers \u2014 but on equipment that has little or nothing to do with combatting opioid addiction.<\/p>\n
Dr. Kelly Ramsey, an addiction specialist and former chief medical officer for the state Office of Addiction Services and Supports<\/a>, says it\u2019s time to reassess who controls the funds and how they\u2019re being used by public officials and law enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201c[Settlement funds] are getting grabbed by everyone for everything. And so it doesn\u2019t really end up with the people who know what to do with that money appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n The five municipalities, plus the City of Buffalo and Erie County, each receive state funding to fight the opioid epidemic. Investigative Post in December reported that Buffalo is sitting on most of the $6 million<\/a> it has received.<\/p>\n In Lackawanna, officials acknowledged they spent nearly all their funding on defibrillators for the city\u2019s fire department \u2014 which a medical expert told Investigative Post are of little to no use in reversing an opioid overdose.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Amherst and Cheektowaga, officials spent their state money to pay for their towns\u2019 drug courts \u2014 including an administrator\u2019s salary, trips to addiction conferences and transportation for participants in drug court programs, which some addiction experts say offer mixed success in combating opioid misuse and overdoses.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Lancaster and Tonawanda officials told Investigative Post that they have not spent any of their settlement funding at all \u2014 more than $100,000 in total.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tonawanda Town Supervisor Joe Emminger didn\u2019t offer much of an explanation as to why the town has failed to spend any funds on opioid treatment programs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just haven\u2019t,\u201d Emminger said.<\/p>\n He said the five-member town board will decide how to spend the town\u2019s $61,000 allocation in the coming months. The board\u2019s decision will be informed largely by the expertise of the town\u2019s law enforcement and emergency medical services departments.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to make sure we\u2019re spending it in the right place,\u201d Emminger said. \u201cIn all likelihood, we\u2019ll spend it on training with our first responders.\u201d<\/p>\n Our coverage of opioid settlement funds<\/p>\n The funds sent to the municipalities come from settlements won by the state attorney general \u2014 and attorney generals nationwide \u2014 in litigation against drug manufacturers and distributors for their role in the epidemic. Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family are among the most well-known targets of the lawsuits, accused of overmarketing Oxycontin, leading to an uptick in opioid addiction nationwide.<\/p>\n The opioid settlement funds are earmarked by law<\/a> \u201cfor treatment, recovery and prevention efforts\u201d in communities that have suffered the effects of the opioid epidemic.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the state Office of Addiction Services and Supports \u2014 which distributes opioid settlement funds \u2014 Lancaster has received at least $40,000 since 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNothing has been spent,\u201d Diane Terranova, Lancaster\u2019s town clerk, told Investigative Post by email.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Lancaster official told Investigative Post that they were considering using funds for opioid overdose reversal training and drug lockboxes at senior centers, ostensibly as a prevention measure for misuse.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way they describe how you can use the funds is very difficult to understand,\u201d said John Trojanowsky, Lancaster\u2019s youth bureau director.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cheektowaga and Amherst spent on courts<\/p>\n According to records and interviews with town officials, Amherst and Cheektowaga have used settlement funds for their drug treatment courts, founded in 1996 and 1997, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cheektowaga\u2019s drug treatment court operates as a post-plea program, whereby an individual with a history of substance use, who has been arrested and charged with a criminal offense, may qualify for diversion to drug treatment instead of jail time. If they graduate from the program, the DA offers \u201ca lesser charge, usually a violation,\u201d according to Megan Green, the town\u2019s drug court coordinator.\u00a0<\/p>\n The state\u2019s Office of Addiction Services and Supports has earmarked $246,000 in settlement funds for Amherst since 2023 through the current fiscal year. At least $68,311 has been spent on drug court expenses, according to records obtained by Investigative Post.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jennifer Adams, interim comptroller for the town of Amherst, told Investigative Post that Amherst currently has $187,000 of settlement funding sitting unspent in a trust. She said the town expects to receive another $24,000, promised for this current fiscal year, within the next month.<\/p>\n So far, the town has used its opioid-fighting money to buy bus passes for drug court participants, staff training, toxicology tests and to pay to send town officials to national drug court conferences.<\/p>\n Investigative Post is awaiting a response to a March 5 Freedom of Information Law request for all settlement fund expenditures in Cheektowaga since 2023.\u00a0 The town has been allotted $61,000 since 2023, according to state records.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brian Nowak, the Cheektowaga town supervisor, told Investigative Post that the opioid settlement funding largely covers a salary for a drug court coordinator. Nowak said the town\u2019s general fund has to \u201csubsidize opioid settlement funds,\u201d specifically the general fund tax levy, to fully pay for the coordinator salary.\u00a0<\/p>\n Christine Khaikin is a senior health policy attorney at Legal Action Center<\/a> in New York City, and has worked for years advocating on a policy level to better direct how opioid settlement money is spent.\u00a0<\/p>\n Khaikin says that state law<\/a> requires that opioid settlement funds expand \u201ctreatment, recovery and prevention\u201d efforts, rather than fill in budget holes, previously supplied by other sources of state or federal dollars.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Paying for a staff position at a drug court that has existed for decades is \u201ca very classic example that we\u2019ve seen in a lot of places,\u201d Khaikin told Investigative Post.<\/p>\n Khaikin added that drug treatment courts results are \u201cmixed,\u201d and that opioid settlement spending on courts indicates a \u201cpunitive,\u201d law-enforcement-oriented approach favored by many counties and municipalities statewide.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA big issue can be that people in the treatment court are required to attend treatment, and then there\u2019s a lack of community treatment available, or they don\u2019t have the coverage that will pay for the treatment that they\u2019ve been required to obtain,\u201d Khaikin said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t prioritized community providers. We\u2019ve just focused on funding in the law enforcement context.\u201d<\/p>\n Green, Cheektowaga\u2019s drug court coordinator, told Investigative Post that drug treatment court participants in Cheektowaga have to complete a treatment program somewhere \u2014 inpatient, outpatient, long-term residential \u2014 in order to graduate from the program.<\/p>\n Participants also have to attend \u201ctwo self-help meetings\u201d a week and are subject to random toxicology screenings three times a week \u2014 the costs of which are also covered by opioid settlement funds.<\/p>\n Green said that for every 1oo people who graduate from Cheektowaga\u2019s yearlong drug court program, \u201cusually only one or two get rearrested.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither Cheektowaga nor Amherst\u2019s drug treatment recent court success and failure rates were publicly available online. Amherst\u2019s drug treatment court staff did not respond to requests for interviews or an emailed set of questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Defibrillators for opioids in Lackawanna<\/p>\n In March 2024, the city of Lackawanna used opioid settlement funds to purchase $33,420 worth of automated external defibrillators, or AEDs \u2014 equipment that addiction experts say does little to address opioid overdoses.<\/p>\n Ramsey, the addiction specialist, said defibrillators are more likely to be used in cases involving cardiac arrest or certain stimulant overdoses.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not the primary intervention for opioid overdose,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The exception, according to Ramsey, is a drug user with underlying cardiac issues.<\/p>\n \u201cBut that\u2019s not the typical physiology or pathology that occurs in an opioid overdose.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Public health officials in other states agree.<\/p>\n Subscribe to our free weekly newsletters<\/p>\n<\/p>\n For example, California\u2019s guidelines for opioid settlement spending<\/a> have strongly discouraged spending funds on defibrillators.<\/p>\n Antonella Peterson, a research assistant for the Opioid Policy Institute<\/a> who studies public health at Yale University, worked for years as a volunteer emergency medical technician in West Virginia and subsequently in military medicine.\u00a0She said the money for equipment like defibrillators should come from a municipality\u2019s general fund, not settlement dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cI can say with confidence that this is a kind of vibes-based spending. It feels good to use this money for our emergency services,\u201d Peterson told Investigative Post.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not what it\u2019s meant for, she said. <\/p>\n \u201cThis [money] is to address the hurt that our communities have experienced in connection to the opioid epidemic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Chuck Clark, spokesperson for the City of Lackawanna, insisted that defibrillators were a legitimate use of opioid settlement dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBased on the external EMT training provided to city firefighters, Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) are considered a first line of defense for treating and reviving opioid patients; therefore, purchasing them with opioid settlement funds is appropriate,\u201d he wrote in an email response to Investigative Post\u2019s inquiry.<\/p>\n Clark said Lackawanna has received $44,356 in opioid settlement dollars and has a balance remaining of $8,484.<\/p>\n Ramsey, the addiction specialist, said opioid settlement dollars are appropriate for some medical equipment purchases. Since opioid overdoses happen as a result of breathing failure, she said, two evidence-based ways funds could be spent are oxygen tanks and pulse oximeters \u2014 the small device you get on your finger at the doctor\u2019s office to check oxygen levels in the blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n The City of Buffalo has a poor record of spending \u2014 or not spending \u2014 settlement funds.<\/p>\n According to city records, Buffalo law enforcement has spent more than $575,000 of its opioid settlement funds on vehicles and related equipment, including speakers for a fireboat.<\/p>\n