Idaho Has Received $73.2 Million in Opioid Settlement Funds — Here's How the Money Is Split

Idaho has received $73,176,709.26 in opioid settlement funds to date, according to the running tally published by the Idaho Office of the Attorney General. The state's share of that is $29,815,263.23. Local governments have received $25,513,095.86. And the state's seven regional public health districts have received $17,848,350.17.

Those numbers sit at the top of the attorney general's opioid settlement page, updated as new payments arrive from the nationwide settlements with Johnson & Johnson and the three largest drug distributors — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson — along with the Purdue Pharma and Mallinckrodt bankruptcies and later resolutions.

Where the money goes is not a matter of discretion. Idaho, its counties and cities, and its health districts signed a document that controls the split — the Idaho Opioid Settlement Intrastate Allocation Agreement — and it is a public record. Understanding it is how a family, a county commissioner or a nonprofit can see whether the dollars aimed at the overdose crisis are actually landing.

The 40/40/20 rule

The agreement divides every settlement dollar three ways:

• 40% to the State Share, deposited into the State-Directed Opioid Settlement Fund established under Idaho Code § 57-825.
• 40% to participating local governments — Idaho counties and eligible cities.
• 20% to participating regional public health districts, paid into the Public Health District Fund established under Idaho Code § 39-422.

The agreement states that the division applies after attorney fees and litigation costs are handled as the document provides — the State Share is deposited into its fund after payment of the state's outside counsel, and the local share is paid out after funds are moved into the Idaho Attorney Fee Back-Stop Fund. Ten percent of the local government share funds that back-stop.

Because of that sequencing, the totals the attorney general reports on any given day will not line up exactly with the 40/40/20 formula: the numbers on the page are gross receipts to date, and the split is the allocation rule the agreement sets for the funds.

Who is eligible to receive money

Not every Idaho city gets a check. Under the agreement, eligible local governments are:

• All counties in the state.
• Cities that were involved in the opioid litigation, plus cities with a population above 10,000.
• The seven regional public health districts created under Title 39, Chapter 4, of the Idaho Code.

A county, city or health district has to sign the agreement to participate. The fact sheet published with the agreement explains the threshold that made it binding: under the national settlements, an intrastate agreement takes effect only if it is signed by local governments whose populations total more than 60% of the state — or more than 50% of the population plus at least 15% of Idaho's counties. A local government that does not sign on does not receive funds under the agreement.

Money allocated to local governments is distributed among participating counties and cities using opioid-specific metrics set out in the agreement's Exhibit B. Health district allocations follow the shares of the counties and cities inside each district, in Exhibit C.

The strings attached

The agreement is not a blank check. Every dollar — state, local or health-district — may be used only for "Approved Purposes" listed in the agreement's Exhibit A, the agreed set of opioid abatement strategies. The document also notes the floor that comes from the national settlements themselves: no less than 85% of funds must be used for opioid remediation, with at least 70% used solely for future opioid remediation.

Compliance is verified through reporting and audits, not trust. The agreement requires annual reporting on how the money was spent, and the attorney general's office publishes the results.

How to see where the money went in your county

The attorney general maintains a Financial Reports page that collects the annual opioid settlement reports filed by local governments. FY 2026 reports landed this month, including filings from Bonneville County, Shoshone County and Twin Falls City, dated Oct. 6, 2026.

The office also publishes the annual financial report form and its instructions, so the same template is used statewide. That means a resident who wants to know whether their county bought naloxone, funded a recovery house, paid for treatment scholarships or spent the money on something unrelated can look it up — in principle, in the county's own filing.

Why this matters in a state still losing people

The stakes are concrete. CDC provisional counts show 256 drug overdose deaths in Idaho over the 12 months ending in April 2026, down from 285 in the 12 months ending October 2025. That is real progress — and still roughly five deaths a week.

Settlement dollars are one of the few funding streams states and counties can direct at that problem without waiting on a legislature or a federal grant cycle. That is why the allocation mechanics — who gets a share, what it can be spent on, who has to report — matter as much as the headline total.

From settlements to community programs

On Oct. 9, Attorney General Raúl Labrador published a column, "From Courtroom Settlements to Community Solutions," describing a recent trip to Burley to see Simply Hope Family Outreach, a group founded in 2015 after a local family nearly lost a son to an overdose. Simply Hope now runs what the letter describes as Idaho's first Safe Teen Assessment Center, offering early intervention, case management and counseling referrals for teenagers and their families.

About $2 million of the group's new building comes from the Idaho Millennium Fund — which holds Idaho's share of the 1998 tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, a separate pot from the opioid settlements. But the letter lays out the machinery that applies to settlement money generally in Idaho: the state constitution, Article VII, Section 13, requires that no money leave the treasury except under an appropriation made by law, so the Legislature decides. In 2000, lawmakers created the Millennium Fund to hold the tobacco payments; each year a committee of five senators and five representatives reviews grant applications, and the Legislature votes.

For an addiction-treatment audience, the practical lesson is that settlement money reaches a community in stages — a payment, a fund, an appropriation, a grant — and the visible end of that chain is a building like the one in Burley, or a report filed by a county.

What to watch next

Settlement payments arrive on a multi-year schedule, so Idaho's total will keep climbing, along with the volume of local annual reports on the attorney general's site. The agreement also anticipates "future resolutions" — new settlements and bankruptcy resolutions that involve both the state and local governments — which the same allocation rules would govern.

Where to get help

Anyone who needs treatment or support can call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 (free, confidential, 24/7), search for care at findtreatment.gov, or reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. Both are free, and neither requires insurance.

Families weighing treatment options can start with our guide to choosing an addiction treatment center, our explainer on medications for opioid use disorder, and our guide to understanding insurance parity — parity law is the reason most commercial plans are required to cover addiction treatment at the same level as other medical care.