New Jersey Weighs 18-Month Deadline for Opioid Settlement Funds

New Jersey lawmakers are considering a requirement that every town and county spend its opioid settlement money within 18 months, a rule that emerged Thursday from a three-hour Assembly hearing where harm reduction workers, mayors and public health officials took turns describing how the state's $1.1 billion share of the national settlements is being handled.

No vote was taken. Assemblyman Avi Schnall, a Democrat from Ocean County who chairs the committee, said he wanted to hear from all sides before moving the bill, which he introduced with Assemblyman Cody Miller of Gloucester County earlier this month. The measure would expand oversight and transparency requirements for the fund and redistribute money that local governments leave unspent.

The hearing in Trenton drew a standing-room-only crowd, and the sharpest testimony came from people who said they spend their days reversing overdoses. "People died for that money," said Arron Wheeler of the Newark Community Street Team. "Let's get the money to where it belongs. My mother suffered from opioid use. My uncle died in an abandoned building because of prescription drugs."

What the bill would do

Under the proposal, recipients would have to commit their settlement dollars within 18 months unless the project is multi-year or the state Department of Human Services grants an extension. Money still sitting idle after that window would be redistributed to jurisdictions that will spend it.

Schnall called it "disgraceful" that some local officials have held onto their allocations while the crisis continued. "People died for that money, and we are not enforcing and obligating and requiring that every dollar is planned," he said.

Miller focused on what the money has bought. Local governments in New Jersey and elsewhere have used settlement funds on concerts and festival-style "public awareness" events, police surveillance equipment, vehicles and fitness gear, according to spending reports released this fall. "This is blood money," Miller said. "It's for people that have lost their lives, and that's what we need to spend it for: for treatment, for recovery, for prevention, for families."

The scrutiny is not new. New Jersey's fiscal 2026 filings, released at the start of October, showed towns directing money toward bounce houses, ice cream socials and dirt bike demonstrations, and advocates have been pressing for tighter guardrails since. Assemblyman Miller introduced an earlier version of the oversight bill on Sept. 24.

The health officers who say they were left out

If the bill's sponsors expected a room split between legislators and defensive mayors, the testimony did not cooperate. Linda Brown, executive director of the New Jersey Association of County and City Health Officials, which represents 104 local health departments, told the committee her group surveyed 25 departments and found that more than half reported they were not consulted at all when their towns decided how to spend settlement dollars. Police, finance or human services departments made those calls instead, she said.

Several mayors and county administrators said they would welcome more guidance rather than a deadline, and asked lawmakers to create a position or commission where local officials could ask questions about planned spending. A state panel issued a five-year strategic plan last year directing officials toward treatment, housing, harm reduction services such as syringe access and drug checking, and wraparound supports like employment and food assistance. Recipients already file public spending reports every fall.

Harm reduction advocates argued that requiring a plan would accomplish more than requiring a clock. Precious Kirby, director of community engagement at Black Lives Matter Paterson, described the requests her organization fields. "When people are asking for our staff, they aren't asking us if we have popcorn, cotton candy, or a nice $600,000 concert," she said. "They're asking: 'Who has Narcan?'"

A declining but still lethal toll

The hearing unfolded against a shrinking but still deadly backdrop. New Jersey recorded 3,171 confirmed drug overdose deaths in 2022; the state has logged just under 800 suspected drug deaths so far this year, according to state data cited at the hearing. Emergency responders administered naloxone in more than 9,500 incidents last year.

That decline has not been evenly distributed, and legislators returned repeatedly to the gap between the size of the settlements and the visible state of care on the ground. The money flowing to New Jersey runs through 2038, with roughly half controlled at the county and municipal level — which is why the spending debate has settled on local discretion rather than on the state's own programs.

What happens next

The committee did not schedule a vote, and Schnall said the testimony would be used to revise the legislation. Advocates who have tracked the spending for years left without a commitment on timing.

The practical question before lawmakers is narrower than whether settlement money should pay for treatment: it is whether a deadline with exceptions is enforceable at all. Towns that cannot staff a spending plan in 18 months are unlikely to produce a compliant one in 24, and the redistribution mechanism the bill proposes would require the state to identify which jurisdictions are sitting on money and which are ready to use it — an accounting task the annual fall reports were not designed to support.

New Jersey's spending reports remain public, and the earlier record of municipal purchases is documented in this blog's October account of the fiscal 2026 filings. For residents trying to find care in the meantime, medication-assisted treatment remains the most widely available option, though access varies sharply by county.