Harm reduction advocates staged a die-in at the Trenton Statehouse on Monday, June 30, 2025, after legislators — fearing federal Medicaid cuts would hurt hospitals — decided to divert $45 million in national opioid settlement funds to four of the state’s largest hospitals. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
By Lilo H. Stainton
Reprinted with permission
New Jersey Monitor
State lawmakers on Monday took the first step to restoring tens of millions in funding for frontline services to address New Jersey’s opioid crisis, money that critics say was “raided” and given to a handful of hospital systems during the budget process last spring.
The Senate’s health committee advanced legislation that calls for the state to pay the hospitals $45 million out of the general fund instead of from a pot of money overseen by New Jersey’s Opioid Recovery and Remediation Advisory Council, a panel that guides the state’s investment of opioid settlement funds. The state is expected to collect $1.3 billion over 15 years through various legal settlements with pharmaceutical companies.
The bill, sponsored by committee chair Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex), received unanimous support Monday but faces additional votes in both the Senate and Assembly before it can be signed into law. The funding would still be distributed as envisioned under the budget bill: $15 million for both RWJBarnabas Health and Cooper University Health Care, $10 million for Hackensack Meridian Health, and $5 million to Atlantic Health.
This bill is a Band-Aid, and we should never have gotten here,” said Bre Azanedo, a member of the advisory council and a harm reduction leader with Black Lives Matter Paterson, one of many advocates who testified in favor of the measure at Monday’s hearing. “The money was not supposed to be used this way.”
Azanedo and other advocates for harm reduction – life-saving strategies like distributing clean needles and the overdose reversal agent naloxone, or Narcan – criticized state lawmakers during last year’s budget process when Democratic legislative leaders took the $45 million in opioid settlement funds and diverted it to the four hospital systems. Then-Attorney General Matt Platkin called the move a “slap in the face to every family that lost a loved one in this devastating crisis,” and critics staged a “die-in” at the Statehouse in Trenton to protest the diversion.
Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), the Senate’s budget chairman, said at the time the funding shift aimed to assist hospitals that treat a lot of people with addiction issues at a time when these facilities were losing resources under Trump administration cuts to the public Medicaid program. But harm reduction advocates said that while hospitals play an important role in caring for people with substance use disorders, New Jersey should devote the funds to frontline services to support families and keep people alive.
The state has already distributed more than $100 million in settlement funds to support harm reduction, housing, and other strategies backed by the advisory council, which includes state officials, clinical and policy experts, and people with first-hand experience.
“Every overdose death is preventable when we have the right services and programs in place,” said Jenna Mellor, executive director of the New Jersey Harm Reduction Coalition and a member of the advisory council. The key is building trust, she added, “trust these individuals do not have in hospitals, police, sometimes even their own families.
After years of increases, drug fatalities peaked with over 3,000 deaths recorded in 2022, but deaths have declined since, with fewer than 1,500 people lost last year, according to preliminary state data, although racial disparities persist.
“You cannot deny the progress,” Mellor said.
