Lane County Accepts $1.3 Million to Build a Methadone Clinic on the Oregon Coast

Lane County commissioners voted on September 29, 2026 to accept a $1.3 million grant from Oregon's share of national opioid settlement funds to build the Florence Treatment Center, a methadone clinic on the central Oregon coast. When it opens, it will be the only medication-based opioid treatment program on a long stretch of coastline — currently, a person living between Coos Bay and Seaside has no such clinic to turn to.

The grant comes from the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and is drawn from the settlements of class-action lawsuits against painkiller manufacturers and distributors. The county's Board of Commissioners authorized the acceptance under Order 26-09-29-07, part of a regular meeting that included an update on the Florence project.

What the county is building

The Florence Treatment Center is the coastal expansion of the Lane County Treatment Center (LCTC), the county's existing opioid treatment program in Eugene. The clinic will provide medication-assisted treatment (MAT) through methadone, a long-acting medication that reduces opioid craving and withdrawal and is one of three medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for opioid use disorder.

According to the county, the new clinic is expected to serve at least 30 people immediately and grow to about 100 patients by the end of its first year. A county analysis projects that the grant will fund nine full-time positions in the clinic's first two years — including a program manager, two nurses, and two qualified mental health professionals — while staff already working at the Eugene center will rotate in part-time during the startup phase.

The county will renovate a former medical clinic at 4480 Highway 101 in Florence rather than build from scratch. Design development is complete, and the county hopes to put the project out to bid and receive proposals before the winter holidays, aiming to open in July 2027.

"This is absolutely about investing in some infrastructure to stand up some healthcare, but it is so much more than that," Commissioner Laurie Trieger said, pointing to the role treatment access plays in preventing homelessness and reconnecting people to long-term recovery, services, and work. Trieger also sits on the state's Opioid Settlement Prevention, Treatment and Recovery (OSPTR) Board, the 18-member body created by 2022 House Bill 4098 to decide how Oregon's share of the money is spent. Board Chair Ryan Ceniga, whose district includes Florence, said community members asked detailed questions about the project before the vote.

Where the money comes from

Oregon is set to receive more than $760 million from opioid settlements paid out between 2022 and 2039, with additional agreements expected to raise that total. Under the state's allocation formula, 55% goes to local governments and 45% stays with the state, where the OSPTR Board directs it.

The board has allocated more than $116 million so far across prevention, harm reduction, treatment, recovery, and research, and has reserved 30% of the state's share — an estimated $88.3 million — for the nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon. The OHA administers the fund and manages the programs the board approves; the agency notes that settlement money never goes directly to individuals.

Statewide, those dollars are being spent against a crisis that has only recently begun to ease. OHA's 2025 report to the Legislature found that 1,544 people died of a drug overdose in Oregon in 2024, a 16% decrease from 1,833 deaths in 2023 and the first annual decline since 2016. More than 90% of fatal overdoses involved fentanyl, methamphetamine, or both, and 62.2% involved multiple substances.

Why treatment access still matters

The falling death count does not mean the treatment gap has closed. The same OHA report found that 79% of people who died of an overdose in 2024 had no record of current mental health or substance use treatment, and only 7.7% had any recorded history of substance use disorder treatment.

Naloxone is reaching more people — 34% of people who died from an overdose in 2024 had been given the reversal medication, up from 10% in 2020 — but a rescue is not a treatment plan. OHA also reported that 25.6% of people who died of an overdose were experiencing homelessness and that 88% of overdose deaths occurred in urban locations, though the agency cautioned that its 2024 declines were a statewide average and were not felt evenly across regions.

For the coast, distance has been its own barrier. Patients in the Florence area currently face long drives to reach a methadone clinic, and methadone — unlike buprenorphine, which can be prescribed from an office or by telehealth — generally requires a licensed opioid treatment program with daily dosing. Oregon lawmakers created county deflection programs in 2024 to steer people facing misdemeanor drug possession charges toward treatment instead of the courts, adding more demand for programs that can accept patients locally.

What's next

The county's next steps are procurement and construction. If the bid and award process stays on schedule, the Florence Treatment Center would open in mid-2027 and begin ramping toward its first-year patient target.

Until then, residents of Lane County — and anyone anywhere in Oregon — can reach the county's existing treatment center in Eugene directly. And anyone can call for help at any hour.

Where to get help

• SAMHSA National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357 — free, confidential, 24/7, English and Spanish, for treatment referrals and information.
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988, 24/7, for mental health and substance use crises.
• Lane County Treatment Center (Eugene): the county's existing opioid treatment program; contact details and program information are on Lane County's Behavioral Health pages.
• Find treatment anywhere in Oregon or the U.S.: findtreatment.gov or the OHA Oregon Prescribing and Drug Overdose Data Dashboard.
• Naloxone: free and low-cost naloxone is available through Oregon's overdose prevention partners and many pharmacies; ask your local public health authority.
• In an emergency: call 911. Oregon's Good Samaritan law protects people who call for help during an overdose from certain drug possession charges.

If someone you love is struggling, the most useful thing you can do today is make the first call. Treatment works, and more of it is arriving on the coast.