Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says he’s trying to unify elected officials and lawyers from cities and counties involved in opioid-related lawsuits. He wants to come up with a broad agreement on how the billions that will likely come their way will be spent.
DeWine says an all-day gathering Wednesday of about 100 city and county elected officials and their lawyers at the Governor’s Residence, along with Attorney General Dave Yost, is the first of its kind among any state seeking damages from opioid manufacturers and distributors.
“There was a real consensus that if we can come together with an agreement about how to spend this money that that's going to put us in a much better position" DeWine says. "So it gives us more leverage, more negotiating power.”
DeWine says it’s not just important for the devastation this opioid epidemic has wreaked on small and big counties in the last decade, but also to preserve money to fight any future drug crisis. He’s set another meeting for next week.