Suffolk County has begun allocating $25 million in settlements for rehabilitation and drug treatment prevention centers. This is the first round of payments, which comes from a lawsuit settlement of opioid manufacturers. The county will receive $200 million over the next 20 years.
“We are dedicated to the idea that these funds will go towards helping those individuals and families who have suffered, that these funds will go towards ending the opioid epidemic once and for all, every single dollar,” County Executive Steve Bellone said last week. “That is our commitment.”
Bellone said that since the 1990s, countless deaths on Long Island had been caused by the opioid crisis.
More than 100 treatment and preventative facilities submitted funding requests, according to Bellone. Thirty-seven proposals for grants of various sizes for three years were accepted by the review committee.
The money has been distributed to the following facilities: Catholic Health’s St. Charles Hospital, Northwell’s John T. Mather Memorial Hospital, Phoenix Houses of Long Island, and the Town of Babylon’s Beacon Family Wellness Center for capital projects.
Linda Ventura, of Kings Park, lost her son Thomas to a battle with addiction that led him to overdose in 2012 sadly. She turned this tragedy into hope and built a foundation that works with New York families battling addiction as we face a heroin and opioid crisis.
“Suffolk County was the first county to sue the pharmaceuticals for the damage they did do,” Ventura told The Messenger.
“Thomas’ Hope Foundation put in for a part of the grant, which we received funding, it was announced last Wednesday,” she continued. “We are boots on the ground, everyday in the community getting people to treatment, working with families, trying to sustain people in early recovery. That’s the work that we do.”
Ventura said that the money will help the foundation hire more staff, create more programs and truly give back to the families of those who lost their loved ones to addiction, or to those who are currently battling.
While this grant helps the Thomas’ Hope Foundation and other healthcare centers in New York to put an end to addiction, Ventura also wants to place an emphasis that the problem is still present.
“The money came at a very high price,” she said. “Too many lives were lost and lives destroyed due to substance abuse, especially to opioids.”
“We are still losing a tremendous amount of people every single day. Unfortunately, I have to walk [families] to a club that no parent should ever belong to,” she added.
