Agenda - 03-07-2023; 8-k - Opioid Litigation Supplemental Agreement for Additional Funds

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13 N*C JOSH STEIN ATTORNEY GENERAL February 14, 2023 Dear County Commissioners, Managers, and Attorneys: I am writing with an important update in our collective fight to address the opioid epidemic and save lives—and a request for you to take action to secure additional opioid settlement funds for your county. As you know, I helped negotiate the $26 billion national opioid settlements with the "big three" drug distributors plus Johnson &Johnson ("Wave One Settlements"). These funds began flowing to your county in 2022. We recently negotiated $21 billion in new settlements with CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, Allergan and Teva ("Wave Two Settlements"). These Wave Two Settlements have the potential to bring significantly greater resources to your county to address the opioid epidemic. North Carolina's state and local governments stand to receive more than $600 million from the Wave Two Settlements— in addition to the more than $750 million we are already receiving from the Wave One Settlements. In traveling across North Carolina in recent months, I have learned firsthand about the many innovative programs to address the opioid crisis that counties and municipalities are funding with money from the Wave One Settlements. I am excited about the many new or expanded programs that can be funded with additional resources from the Wave Two Settlements. As with the Wave One Settlements, North Carolina will receive its full share of payments from the Wave Two Settlements only if all eligible governments, including your county, sign onto each settlement. And the defendants will agree to finalize the Wave Two Settlements only if the vast majority of local governments across the nation sign onto them. In the coming days, your county manager or attorney (or other senior staff your county identified in the course of approving the Wave One Settlements) will receive an email from the national administrator, Rubris. The email from Rubris will invite your county to sign onto each of the five new Wave Two Settlements as well as a supplement to the North Carolina Memorandum of Agreement ("MOA") on the allocation, use, and reporting of funds from the Wave One settlements. This supplement to the MOA is called the "Supplemental Agreement for Additional Funds from Additional Settlements of Opioid Litigation" or "SAAF" for short. It provides that the bulk of North Carolina's money from the Wave Two Settlements will go to counties and municipalities to address the opioid crisis. The SAAF extends the basic terms of the MOA governing the Wave One Settlements to the Wave Two Settlements. Like the MOA, the SAAF has the support of my office, the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC), and the North Carolina League of Municipalities (NCLM).