As Portsmouth resident Jay Hash drives through town, he’s quick to show off the city’s history and charm, from its famous floodwall murals to historic breweries.
Between the attractions, he points out the abundance of treatment facilities — an indicator of how the city has transformed since the opioid epidemic first hit.
“That used to be a car dealership,” he said. “And this used to be a regular, not-treatment-center-owned garage. There's a hotel that you passed when you came in, that used to be a Holiday Inn [and] is now a counseling center.”
Hash is the founder of HopeSource, a small mental health and substance use disorder treatment center in town. He and his team of 65 have been trying to do their part to help the community recover from the opioid epidemic.
Hash and others in the community are hopeful that opioid settlement funds will help in that effort, but they’re frustrated with the way those funds are distributed. Given the outsized impact the opioid epidemic has had on the county, they think it deserves more than has been allocated by the state.
In the past decade, Scioto County has had Ohio's worst overdose death rate, per data from the Ohio Department of Health. From 2015 to 2020, 80 out of every 100,000 people there died from an opioid overdose. For comparison, the second highest rate in Montgomery County was 65 overdose deaths per every 100,000 people.
“That (the opioid epidemic) happened here first isn't such a big deal, that's just kind of a timeline thing. But that it happened the way it happened here and the lingering effects of that, it's significant,” Hash said.
Dividing the money from Ohio’s opioid settlement deals
In 2021, the state of Ohio announced a massive $808 million settlement agreement with the nation’s three largest opioid distributors: McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health.
Since then, the state has settled with more companies, bringing the total amount flowing to the state to about $2 billion.
Ohio splits that money into three pools: 15% stays with the state, 55% goes to a nonprofit charged with overseeing how the funds are spent, and the remaining amount goes directly to local townships, cities and counties.
To determine the amount of money each locality gets, the state created a formula that prioritizes the total number of people in each county that suffer from opioid use disorder and who died from an overdose, rather than the number of opioid disorders and deaths per capita. This means more populous communities, like Cincinnati and Cleveland, get more money than smaller ones, like Portsmouth.
Ohio Newsroom member station WOUB reported in 2023 that Scioto County officials initially considered its relatively small payout an insult.
So, the county rejected the first statewide settlement with the “Big Three” opioid distributors. They wanted to continue the lawsuit independently, with hopes of getting a bigger payout.
But now, their case is stuck in a court in northeast Ohio, where Judge Dan Aaron Polster with the U.S. District Court of Northern Ohio is overseeing a mountain of claims and cases from around the country in what’s called “multi-district litigation.” Polster has the power to release any cases against companies to their original districts as “bellwether trials.”
That hasn’t happened yet for Scioto County’s ongoing lawsuit against the “Big Three” or for another lawsuit the county is involved in against pharmacy benefit managers Express Scripts and Optima.
In the meantime, Scioto County is missing out on payments that other communities are receiving.
Since the first statewide settlement, Scioto County has agreed to other statewide settlements with companies like CVS and Janssen. County officials declined to comment about their change of strategy.
At a February meeting for the OneOhio Recovery Foundation board, Scioto County Commissioner Scottie Powell stepped down from his role as the Region 9 chair. Powell remains on the board and said his county should still participate in the meetings.
“I still consider us the epicenter, so if there’s something we can do to be involved, I think we should do it,” he said.
Scioto County has gotten about $800,000 so far from the settlement deals it’s joined onto. That’s a fraction of the millions larger communities have gotten.
Hash, with Hopesource, said that’s not fair. He said he is supportive of Scioto County trying to go at some of the lawsuits on its own.
“If you looked at it like a math problem, then it would be a no-brainer,” he said. “Scioto county and Lawrence and Adams … could be recipients of more of a proportion of the funding than what is currently being allocated.”
Rebuilding community
Joshua Lawson, author of the book “The Face of Addiction: Stories of Loss and Recovery,” also said he understands why Scioto County initially wanted to go it alone. But now that it’s receiving funds from other settlements, he says it’s important to prioritize giving those funds to individuals and their family members.
“With decades worth of suffering, loss and death, whatever we can do to ensure that that money gets as close to the individuals impacted — and their family members and those who've been left — as they can would be the best thing to do,” Lawson said.
The millions flowing to the OneOhio Recovery Foundation and the grants they dole out have benefitted multiple organizations in the area. The foundation’s Region 9, which includes Scioto County and seven other counties, has given out 10 grants worth $2.75 million.
For example, the Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio got a $100,000 grant to build recovery supports and fund a dedicated attorney for the southern Ohio region. The nonprofit law firm has an office across the hall from HopeSource in Portsmouth, but serves a much wider 36-county area.
And the Ohio State University Foundation — Ohio Youth Resilience Collaborative got a $627,826 grant supporting the creation of community prevention infrastructure to expand substance misuse prevention in communities in Pike, Scioto, Highland and Ross counties.
This would try to engage youth, caregivers and young adults in school and at home to bolster substance use resilience at the school, family and community levels. The organization also wants to provide critical living skills to young adults and families at risk of opioid use or other behavioral health issues.
None of the grant awards have been given to a program specific to Scioto County or Portsmouth yet.
Lawson said Portsmouth needs more non-clinical spaces and efforts to destigmatize addiction recovery. He hopes more settlement money and grants from the OneOhio Recovery Foundation flow toward those efforts.
“I believe there's been progress made,” he said. “I don't think it's as good as it could be. And recently we've seen a resurgence of some of the old prejudices and stigmas in the Portsmouth area.”
Hash said HopeSource applied for a $100,000 grant to start a clubhouse or drop-in center he called “a healthy place to go” where people can be safe, attend a 12-step meeting or just be around others like them.
“[It would be] a place for them to be around people who are like-minded, trying to recover and putting them in connection with resources who want them to recover and let them feel like a human being for those six or seven hours,” Hash said.
HopeSource didn’t win that award, but they plan to keep applying in future grant cycles.
Overdose deaths continue to fall annually. Harm Reduction Ohio recently reported that Scioto County had 48 overdose deaths last year in 2024, a 40% decline from 2023.
Hash said he wants more of the money to go toward addiction and overdose prevention. So far over half of the grants went towards prevention in Region 9.
He said more work needs to be done to make naloxone kits and needle exchange programs more available.
Hash also wants the state to simply help his community and those affected most by the opioid crisis rebuild.
“These are people,” he said. “They're not people that are trying to do harm to our community or even do harm to themselves. They have a disorder that is taking control of their lives.”
