South Carolina’s $360 million portion of a national opioid lawsuit settled in 2023 is paving the way for hundreds of new initiatives and programs aimed at tackling addiction at the local level.
And that’s night and day from just a few years ago before former S.C. Rep. Eric Bedingfield took his role as chairman of the S.C. Opioid Recovery Fund (SCORF) Board.
“[The situation then] was incredibly bad,” he said. “I lost my son eight years ago to the opioid epidemic.
“We didn’t have these funds yet. It was kind of hysteria. There just wasn’t enough money being put into the system to combat what was happening around us.”
But that’s changed as the state has spread millions of dollars to fight the epidemic, Bedingfield said.
“We’ve addressed harm reduction and prevention programs, and we’re talking to more middle and high school kids than ever before.”
Prior to the release of settlement funds, opioid-related deaths were staggeringly high and climbing rapidly. In 2022, 2,296 people died due to a drug overdose in South Carolina, a 6% increase from 2021, according to the S.C. Department of Public Health. Of those, 1,864 overdoses were from opioids — and 1,660 were fentanyl. Death rates for 2023 and beyond have not yet been released.
A positive impact
Bedingfield said it’s difficult to see the impact the funds have had, as the SCORF Board is only just beginning to analyze incoming audit reports from the first year of funding. But he’s confident from what he’s seen that the money has made a difference in getting people into recovery.
Part of the reason he said it’s difficult to analyze is because the programs differ so vastly by community.
“Our communities are developing programs that are impacting them locally and giving us the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, every community is different. Everybody is going to have to tackle this differently.’ … These funds have been spent on critical needs that will impact local communities far into the future. And they are definitely thinking outside of the box.”
From prevention programs, information campaigns, Narcan distribution programs, partnerships with EMS and law enforcement agencies and more, residents across the Palmetto State have found several ways to support those struggling with addiction.
Controversial harm reduction
In some pockets, more controversial initiatives like needle exchange programs have helped local communities rein in the severity of the crisis before working to bring down numbers. Through these programs, addicts can exchange used needles for clean, new ones, reducing the chance of infection, overdose and death when using illicit drugs.
But these programs are uncommon in South Carolina and a lot smaller than in larger areas across the nation where addiction is more prevalent, such as neighborhoods in New York City and Chicago.
“There’s a lot of fear when it comes to these programs because people tend to not view them as us trying to prevent someone from using drugs, but we’re thinking differently than this has been thought about in the past,” Bedingfield said. “Of course, we prefer people to not be using these drugs at all, but those with substance abuse issues can come in and say, ‘I’m going to use, and I don’t have a clean needle,’ and we can help them.”
But due to the way some laws are written in South Carolina, needle exchange programs can be problematic. Used needles are considered drug paraphernalia, putting program volunteers and state workers at risk of being charged with possession. One bill, S. 854, was filed last year to address the issue.
Services reach thousands
The Charleston Center, Charleston County’s premier substance use prevention, intervention, education and treatment facility, received $1.7 million in 2023 from the first round of the opioid settlement. Funds were used to add and strengthen more than a dozen government programs and partnerships, including the hiring of a new opioid initiative coordinator, Sarah Halse.
Halse said she’s excited about a lot of coming programs funded by the settlement, including an as-yet-unnamed community app that will be able to provide real-time support to individuals who reach out for help.
“We want to help people find Naloxone or test strips, show people how to administer Nalaxone, how to find different meetings in the community, how to access health care and more,” she said. “And we’ll be able to do all of that through this application we’re developing.”
Between April 2023 and November 2024, the Charleston Center:
- Distributed 2,902 prescription drug deactivation systems
- Distributed 1,035 safe storage units to safely store prescription drugs
- Reached 813 people through 38 training programs
- Participated in 72 outreach events reaching more than 5,000 people
- Distributed 5,998 Naloxone kits
The Charleston Center tracks the data through its new public dashboard, which was also launched thanks in part to the opioid settlement funds.
Stigma still a problem
With increasing efforts and a shifting mindset on the opioid epidemic, health care specialists are hoping the general stigma against those struggling with addiction begins to wane, but so far, it hasn’t.
“The work we’ve been doing with law enforcement and the judicial system has helped to break down their perceptions of people struggling with drug addiction,” Halse said. “But there are still pockets of stigma within those areas and the community as a whole.”
“When we post something about Narcan or saving a life, we still see a lot of negative comments on social media that show a lot of intolerance toward people with substance abuse disorders, not realizing these people are loved ones, friends or parents,” she added.
Making recovery a more normalized practice and taking a public health approach to drug addiction and the opioid crisis specifically will go a long way toward addressing underlying problems, Halse said.
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