Baltimore's landmark opioid lawsuit has involved a lot of the waiting game. And earlier this week, city officials announced the much-maligned exercise in patience will drag on even longer.
At a Restitution Advisory Board meeting on Wednesday, J.D. Merrill, deputy mayor for equity, health, and human services, announced that the judge overseeing the case granted the city a one-month extension to respond to the terms outlined in a ruling earlier this month. In his decision, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill rejected the city's request for billions in abatement money and ruled that he would allow for a new trial in the case against two opioid distributors, reversing a 2024 jury verdict that won the city $266 million in "public nuisance" damages.
The city's initial deadline to decide whether to opt for a new trial or accept a whopping 80% reduction in its award — totaling less than $52 million — was July 7. After that, Fletcher-Hill would rule on abatement, he wrote.
"We heard back from the court today; he is going to extend our deadline from July 7 to August 8, and he will rule on abatement approximately two weeks prior to August 8," Merrill said. "So, the city can make a decision and evaluate the offer with knowledge of the abatement decision."
Leading up to the judge's ruling earlier this month, city officials had hoped the judge would leave the jury verdict untouched and award it an additional $5.2 billion in abatement money to fund a sweeping plan to combat the overdose crisis.
Instead, Fletcher-Hill tore apart the city's argument and rejected the city's massive request, indicating it likely won't receive anywhere near the billions of dollars it had asked for.
The judge wrote that the jury’s decision and the city's abatement plan were predicated on the flawed assertion that McKesson and Cencora, formerly AmerisourceBergen, caused 97% of opioid-related damages. The judge sided with the defendants' arguments, stating that the city failed to prove they were responsible to that degree.
“The Court finds that the verdict rendered is grossly excessive in light of the evidence and is shocking to the Court,” Fletcher-Hill wrote.
Mayor Brandon Scott called the decision "disappointing to say the least." And indeed, it was a massive blow to the city's plans for restitution funds.
With the initial jury decision, the city had anticipated nearly $670 million in its war chest to combat the overdose crisis. Officials may now have to adjust their plans to operate with $200 million less, bringing into question their reliance upon those funds to bankroll harm reduction and treatment programs.
There is, however, a silver lining. After more than a year of city officials remaining largely mum on the overdose crisis because of ongoing litigation, it appears they are finally opening up public discourse.
After the mayor twice successfully pressured Baltimore City Council members to cancel public hearings, the Public Health and Environmental Committee will hold four hearings on the crisis and related matters next month.
Councilwoman Phylicia Porter has announced that the committee hearings will take place at 10 a.m. in the City Council's chambers. The dates and topics are as follows:
- July 9: Hearing on the city’s response to the overdose crisis.
- July 16: Hearing on legislative oversight of the opioid restitution funds.
- July 23: Hearing on legislative oversight of psychiatric rehabilitation programs (PRPs).
- July 30: Hearing on oversight of recovery homes and substance use clinics.
In addition, Scott on Wednesday announced four "community listening sessions" to discuss restitution funds at 5:30 p.m. at the following locations and dates:
- July 9: Cherry Hill Elementary and Middle School, 801 Bridgeway Rd.
- July 17: Gethsemane Baptist Church, 2520 Francis St.
- July 23: Pimlico Elementary and Middle School, 4849 Pimlico Rd.
- July 31: Henderson Hopkins Elementary and Middle School, 2100 Ashland Ave.
With hearings on the horizon, city officials must prepare for a potentially harsh reality. Baltimore may not get as many millions in restitution funds as it had hoped, but that doesn't mean that the overdose crisis — or the resounding calls for drug policy reform — will go away.
Fatal overdose rates remain astonishingly high. Meanwhile, the city continues to rely on heavy-handed drug enforcement that disproportionately impacts Black Baltimoreans. A failure to properly invest in harm reduction and treatment programs, therefore, may come back to haunt it.
As it now stands, things aren't looking good, even though fatal overdoses plummeted last year as part of a national trend.
Mayor Brandon Scott's budget, which he signed on Monday, includes a $7 million cut to the health department, marking a 3.5% decrease from the year prior. At $201 million, it will receive less than one-third of that of the police department — and nearly half of that comes from federal funding that could be lost because of President Donald Trump’s barrage of cost-cutting measures.
Meanwhile, the fiscal plan also includes a more than $20 million increase to the Baltimore Police Department's budget for the upcoming fiscal year, bringing its total to almost $613 million.
At budget hearings earlier this month, the BPD's top brass boasted about an increase in drug arrests — adding that even more drug-war policing is required — and touted initiatives that are antithetical to the demands of harm reductionists and public health experts.
In light of the city's financial decisions, officials could benefit from taking a step back and listening to the people.
However, as they do so, they must take into account that frustrations with public drug use and other drug-related activities, though understandable, often involve calls for policies that do far more harm than good.
Historically, many communities have supported the War on Drugs. Yet they haven't done so because they blindly support the police, but rather out of fear that drugs are destroying their communities.
Cities have seized the opportunity to weaponize those concerns, using them as a green light to crack down on drug users and other vulnerable populations.
Ultimately, it will be up to those in power to make a critical decision: Will you make a concerted effort to shift the city's priorities away from punitive drug enforcement and toward programs that will keep drug users alive, or will you continue a failed war that fuels suffering and death?
Miss last week's newsletter? You'll want to check it out
Four years ago, a headline in The Independent proclaimed, "Baltimore ends war on drugs with plot line straight from The Wire."
Aside from the overused and often-irritating reference to "The Wire," the 2021 article highlighted former State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's de facto decriminalization policy. The move marked a historic break from the city's notoriously militarized policing strategy by ending the prosecution of low-level crimes, including misdemeanor drug charges such as possession. It was hailed by criminal justice advocates and harm reductionists across the nation.
There are just a couple of problems: Not only has the policy since been reversed, but it never ended the drug war to begin with.
Read the full newsletter here.
Mobtown Redux's Overdose Data has been updated with the latest local, state and national data
Baltimore's overdose death toll in 2024 has increased to 776 — this is preliminary data that's subject to change as causes of death are determined. That marks a nearly 26% decrease from the year prior.
In the 12-month period ending in May, Baltimore saw 643 deaths, a death rate of 109.8 per 100,000 people. Statewide, there were 1,465 deaths, a death rate of 23.7 per 100,000 people.
Neighborhoods in West Baltimore saw the most deaths, an unfortunate pattern in this data.
Check out Mobtown Redux's Overdose Data Dashboard here.
Click here to learn more about harm reduction resources in the Baltimore area.
Filter: "How Can Drug Decriminalization Be Built to Last?"
In public drug policy conversations, decriminalization has too often been framed as a catch-all solution to drug-related issues, from overdose and stigma to health care access and public drug use. It’s easy to see why—especially in the heat of campaigns pushing for long-overdue reform—but overpromising can be dangerous.
While decriminalization is rightly celebrated as a progressive improvement to punitive drug laws, the global reality is messy: a patchwork of partial reforms, mixed results and models being measured against goals they were never designed to meet.
“We’ve developed this idea that decriminalization is some kind of magic bullet,” Professor Alison Ritter, AO, director of the Drug Policy Modelling Program at the University of New South Wales, told Filter. “It will reduce arrests—we can be confident about that. There is evidence to support it. But will it reduce overdose rates? Honestly, I don’t think it would.”
Click here to read the full article.
