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After Years of Meetings, Davidson County’s $25 Million Opioid Settlement committee pushes to finally hire coordinator

Read the original article on DavidsonLocal.com.

The Davidson County Opioid Settlement Fund Committee is looking at hiring a coordinator to oversee how to use the $12 million the county will have in opioid settlement funds.  

Currently Davidson County has been paid $6.9 million in opioid settlement funds and is slated to receive another $1.9 million in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, according to the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. 

These settlement funds are part of the $56 billion North Carolina received from the national opioid settlement lawsuit in 2021. Davidson County is slated to receive $23.4 million over the next 13 years. 

On Monday, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced North Carolina will receive $145 million in a settlement with Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sacker family. Davidson County is slated to receive an additional $2.3 million in funding from this recent settlement. Most of these funds will be distributed in the next three years according to the NC Department of Justice. 

This would bring the Davidson County Opioid Settlement fund to approximately $12 million, which has mostly not been used. Last year, the county approved $1.2 million from opioid settlement funds toward the Medically Assisted Treatment program at the Davidson County Jail. 

During the meeting on Tuesday, several committee members vented frustration on the lack of progress, stating they have met for several years and have yet to come up with a clear plan on how to spend these funds. 

Lillian Koontz, director of the Davidson County Health Department, said she proposed the idea of hiring a coordinator for the opioid settlement funds over a year ago. 

“These were the exact things we talked about and here we are a year later,” said Koontz. “We have not spent any money; we have not done any coordination…  I strongly support using some of the opioid funds to identify a human being to do the research for us, to say how much money we have, to vet the programs and then bring solid ideas to us. As it is now, we just come into a meeting, hear some ideas and then we don’t meet again for several months and we are not doing anything.” 

The committee members voted to send their recommendations to hire a coordinator/director to oversee the county opioid settlement funds to the county commissioners for approval during their meeting on June 23. If approved, the county manager would work with the county human resource director to create a job description and begin the hiring process. 

Committee member Billy West, executive director of Daymark Recovery Services, said the committee should also consider granting smaller requests, under $10,000, to community partners until the new coordinator can be hired.  

“It could be three or four months before that person actually gets (here),” said West. “In the meantime, there are other things that can be done so we are not viewed as a bunch of people sitting around with $12 million and won’t even spend $20,000 of it on local things.” 

Mike Loomis, founder of Race Against Drugs, currently has a request for approximately $6,000 in funding from the Davidson County Opioid Settlement Committee and has not had any response from the group, or had his request sent to the county commissioners.  

He is currently paying for educational materials, like several billboards to raise awareness of the impact of fentanyl overdoses, out of his own pocket. He purchases doses of Naloxone and distributes them in the community. Race Against Drugs also has an awareness event at Breeden Insurance Amphitheater in Lexington on Aug. 9. 

Loomis said he is disappointed in the progress of the opioid committee, especially when it comes to supporting those in the community who are “boots on the ground” in battling opioid addiction. 

“They are just waiting for another life to be lost,” said Loomis. “I have been doing this by myself for so long and I am up against the stigma of people struggling with addiction. I am disappointed, but I will keep doing what I do.” 

County commissioner Steve Shell said the opioid committee can already bring any spending request for use of settlement funds for approval by the county commissioners. 

The committee also discussed other options available to combat opioid addiction, including Naloxone (Narcan) vending machines, which would be available to citizens after hours. Several members showed hesitation on placing these machines in the community but voted to create a list of community partners which are already providing Naloxone. 

The providers list would be available on the United Way 211 system.  NC 211 is an information and referral service that connects people with local resources 24-hours a day. 

Major Billy Louya, who oversees operations at the Davidson County Detention Center, gave an update on MAT program. He said since Jan. 1, there have been 27 participants in the program, which equals about 1% of inmates booked into the jail. 

The MAT program uses once a month medication administered at the jail, instead of transporting inmates to local treatment clinics weekly and includes a peer support program after the inmate is released from detention. 

The committee also discussed finding additional community partners to provide more post incarceration peer support. 

The Davidson County Opioid Settlement Fund Committee meets quarterly and includes representatives from organizations impacted by opioid addiction, including the health department, law enforcement, family services, emergency services, county government, elected officials and community partners involved in prevention and recovery. 

Alleged attempted fentanyl drugging shuts down Southern Colorado music festival

Read the original article on the KRDO website.

LAS ANIMAS COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) – The Apogaea festival was set to be held June 4-8, but it was cut short due to alleged non-consensual drugging involving fentanyl. On Sunday, the Apogaea Board of Directors released a statement to clarify the weekend’s events.

The festival is known as a Colorado Burning Man regional event held near Trinidad, just north of New Mexico. What was expected to be a weekend full of art and music was quickly shut down.

On Thursday afternoon, event organizers say two festival goers came to a department tent, saying they had been gifted a substance that they tested positive for fentanyl. They say a volunteer notified the Apogaea Incident Command System (ICS), which in turn alerted the County emergency coordinator. Apogaea says they never had custody of the substance and did not test it.

The next morning, on Friday, organizers say a participant noticed an undissolved gelcap in their clear water bottle. This tested positive for fentanyl via two strip tests. Organizers say that since the bottle had been on volunteer premises, there was immediate concern that somebody might be targeting the volunteers. Apogaea says they tested the gelcap again with multiple reagent tests, which resulted in confirming the presence of multiple substances.

Field test methodologies are not 100% accurate, and they can result in false positives, shared the Apogaea board. With the presence of the gelcap reagent tests and the multiple positive fentanyl results, Apogaea says their teams had a high confidence that this was a situation of non-consensual drugging.

Organizers say that as a precaution, community water in the nearby Center Camp Café and Ranger Station was dumped. The board says they updated the County and worked with the Las Animas County Sheriff’s Office (LACSO) to come to the decision to close the event.

The Sheriff’s Office tells KRDO13 it was aware of the incident, however, it was not contacted by anyone to initiate a formal investigation of the alleged incident, nor have any suspects been identified.

KRDO13 spoke with Joe Richards, the Las Animas County Emergency Manager, who was in contact with the event organizers. Richards says the incident commander contacted him initially on Thursday to make him aware that two people at the festival had tested for and found fentanyl in a substance someone had given to them.

He says that after they had another instance with someone finding a capsule in their water the next day, which tested positive for fentanyl, that’s when they became more concerned and contacted him.

Richards tells KRDO13 the incident commander said they’d like to shut the event down to prevent any further risks, and he said it’s up to you, but I support it wholeheartedly.

So he says, as a group, they came to the conclusion to shut down the event, and although some are upset, he’s grateful there were no serious injuries. Richards says the incident commanders were proactive and took the right steps to handle the incident.

Richards says with 1,400-1,500 people at the event, the possibility of someone non-consensually drugging others was highly concerning, especially with how deadly fentanyl is. He says there were multiple EMTs at the festival, along with a local fire department on scene for nearly the entire event.

Apogaea says that to their knowledge, no one was dosed or harmed physically at the event, and there were zero medical transports from the site during the event.

Why are synthetic opioids so dangerous? An ER doc explains

Read the original article on CNN.com.

The United States is facing an alarming increase in overdose deaths among young people due to synthetic opioids.

The rate of drug overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids, which include fentanyl and fentanyl analogs, increased more than 20-fold between 2013 and 2022, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overdoses and drug poisonings are now the third leading cause of death in people under age 20, behind firearms and motor vehicle crashes.

The overdose death counts among US youth ages 15 to 24 rose from 4,652 to 6,723 between 2018 and 2022, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics. (A slight decrease occurred between 2021 and 2022.)

The largest increase was seen in deaths involving only synthetic opioids: Since 2020, fatal overdoses involving only these substances were higher than overdoses in which multiple substances were implicated. Overdose rates were nearly 2.5 times higher among male youths compared with female youths and more than two times higher among those ages 20 to 24 compared with those ages 15 to 19.

As a parent, I wanted to know more about synthetic opioids and their uses. Why are they so dangerous, and how are overdoses treated? How can people tell if the drugs they are taking contain synthetic opioids? Crucially, what can parents and other family members do to help reduce the risk of overdose?

The article continues on CNN.com or download the article PDF below.

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Two arrested in connection with Riley Goolishian’s fentanyl death in Beaufort

Beaufort, NC — Two men are now behind bars in connection with the death of a 25-year-old woman following a joint investigation, according to the Beaufort Police Department.

Officials say 26-year-old Ladavion Vontrell Manning of Morrisville and 24-year-old Kevin Crishawn Milliken of Apex are facing second-degree murder, death by distribution and the sale and delivery of Schedule II controlled substances.

Manning was taken into custody at his Morrisville home on May 2, 2025 and was also charged with sale and delivery of fentanyl. He remains jailed at the Carteret County Detention Center under a $750,000 bond.

On Tuesday, June 3 officials arrested Milliken in Chatham County. He also faces separate charges in Chatham County, including felony possession of cocaine, maintaining a vehicle or dwelling, possession of drug paraphernalia and simple possession of a schedule IV-controlled substance. Milliken remains in jail in Chatham County under a $1 million bond and will be transported to Carteret County for trial proceedings.

These arrests come after an investigation into the death of Riley Goolishian, who was found in her Beaufort home back on May 26 of 2024 unresponsive. Authorities say she died a day later at Carteret Health Care in Morehead City. It was confirmed her cause of death was fentanyl and cocaine toxicity through autopsy and toxicology findings.

The joint investigation determined that both Manning and Milliken sold fentanyl and cocaine to Goolishian the day prior to her being found unresponsive.

The investigating agencies include the Beaufort Police Department, Carteret County Sheriff’s Office and the NC SBI.

Beaufort Police Chief Paul Burdette stated, “This case represents a coordinated effort by multiple law enforcement agencies to bring justice in the face of a heartbreaking loss. We remain committed to pursuing those who distribute dangerous and illegal substances in our communities.”

Catawba County spending about 10% of opioid settlement funds. Where is the money going?

Read the original article on the Hickory Record website (pay wall).

Billy Chapman

“Because these funds are a one-time disbursement, as a community, we have to be strategic about where they are spent to ensure that we have a meaningful and lasting impact.”

To read this article you must have access to the Hickory Record.

AG Jeff Jackson’s Newsletter on Fentanyl

On May 22nd Jeff Jackson’s newsletter featured details on the lawsuit filed against WeChat which is a key enabler of the fentanyl epidemic.

Last week, South Carolina’s Attorney General, Alan Wilson, joined me for a press conference.

He had accepted my invitation to make an announcement together.

That’s two different states – and two different parties – standing together for one reason.

Folks, it’s time to tell you about something I’ve been working on.

Fentanyl is the leading cause of death for people my age and younger. In North Carolina, we lose about six people a day.

It’s really the third wave of the opioid crisis that began with OxyContin in the 1990s. That was the prescription pill crisis, which became the heroin crisis, which became the synthetic heroin crisis, and that’s fentanyl.

As AG, I’ve met a lot of families who have lost loved ones. It’s crushing. And I have a responsibility to attack this problem on every front I can.

One of those fronts is illegal money laundering – the engine that makes the fentanyl trade so profitable. And I’m starting with a very big target.

How the Fentanyl Trade Works

Here’s a quick outline:

Step 1: Drug cartels in Mexico buy the chemical ingredients for fentanyl from China. Those ingredients are shipped to Mexico, mostly in large cargo ships but sometimes as regular air parcels via commercial carriers, like FedEx.

Step 2: The cartels mix those chemicals and produce fentanyl.

Step 3: The fentanyl is smuggled into the U.S., taken to various cities that serve as distribution hubs (often where highways intersect), then sold to dealers, who sell to users.

Step 4 (this is the money laundering part): The cash from the drug sales doesn’t go back to Mexico – not directly. Instead, it’s laundered through an underground banking network run by money brokers, often in China.

It’s important to know that China limits how much money its citizens can move out of the country – no more than $50,000 a year. But many wealthy Chinese nationals want to move more.

So brokers in China connect the two markets: the cartel’s drug traffickers in the U.S. and Chinese nationals who want to move their money out of the country and into U.S. dollars.

The broker accepts the cartel’s drug money, finds someone who wants to get money out of China, and makes a match.

Then the broker essentially says, “Ok, Mr. Cartel Guy – this Chinese currency is now yours. You can now buy anything you want that is made in China and we’ll ship it to you.”

And once those goods (often cars and farm equipment) are shipped from China to Mexico, the cartels arrange for them to be sold into the domestic market for pesos, at which point they collect their profit.

How much money are we talking about here?

Billions.

The WeChat connection

The evidence strongly suggests that the main platform used to facilitate that money laundering is an app called WeChat.

You’ve probably heard of WhatsApp. It’s the largest text messaging app in the world.

Well, the second-largest text messaging app is WeChat. It’s owned by a Chinese company and has over a billion users.

And when it comes to fentanyl money laundering, as one DEA agent said, “It’s all happening on WeChat.”

So I spent months digging into it. Talking with agents. Reading reports. When I felt like I had the full picture, I called five other attorneys general – two Democrats, three Republicans. I asked them to join me in stopping WeChat from being a safe harbor for money laundering.

They all agreed.

So we worked on our plan and last week we took the first step, which AG Wilson and I announced at our press conference (the other AGs were invited but live too far away to attend).

The first step is a public letter to WeChat summarizing some of the evidence about their complicity in a vast amount of money laundering and giving them 30 days to respond with a detailed account of steps they will now take to stop this.

If they fail to respond, we have a range of options for escalation.

But as I said at our press conference:

“Evidence suggests that WeChat has allowed itself to become an enormous digital pipeline for money laundering that fuels the fentanyl trade. By allowing that to continue, WeChat is essentially helping to bankroll the fentanyl epidemic. This must stop.”

I’ll let you know what we hear back, and that will determine next steps.

AmeriCorps lawsuit

One more quick update:

We recently filed a lawsuit against the federal administration after it attempted to unlawfully defund AmeriCorps.

Congress authorized AmeriCorps funding, and the executive branch cannot unilaterally cut it.

But beyond that, it would have hit western North Carolina especially hard as it’s rebuilding from Hurricane Helene. AmeriCorps has a strong presence there.

We had a hearing this week on a request for an injunction to stop the government from cutting this vital program. We expect to hear soon how the first round of that case will go.

Best,

Jeff

P.S. Avery stopped by the office the other day. Here she is signing some very important papers:

AGs in both Carolinas target Chinese app linked to international fentanyl trade

Read the original article on the SC Daily Gazette website.

The Chinese messaging app WeChat has more than a billion users globally

Attorney General Alan Wilson speaks at a news conference on Monday, May 12, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C., about an effort to hold WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, accountable for its role in the fentanyl trade. He’s accompanied by North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Lt. Robert Sprague. (Photo courtesy of Attorney General Alan Wilson’s Office)

Attorneys general from six states, including both Carolinas, say they’re demanding accountability from WeChat, a Chinese messaging and payment platform being used by fentanyl traffickers.

The bipartisan group is giving WeChat, what’s become known as a super app, a month to detail what steps it’s taking, if any, to combat its use as a money launderer for the international drug trade.

“We need answers; we need them now,” Republican Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s attorney general since 2011, said at a news conference Monday in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Standing beside him was North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat.

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