Douglas County Puts $1.45 Million of Opioid Funds Into Youth Recovery

Douglas County commissioners on Tuesday approved about $1.45 million in opioid settlement funding for five local organizations, directing most of the money toward youth prevention and recovery and setting aside $200,000 for something less glamorous but often decisive: rides to treatment.

The awards cover the 2026–2028 funding cycle and were recommended by the Douglas County Opioid Council, the county panel that reviews applications and steers settlement dollars toward prevention, treatment and recovery. The five recipients range from a high school to a transportation company that serves courts and recovery programs.

The five awards

• 5280 High School, $428,003 to strengthen recovery support and prevent youth opioid misuse.
• FullCircle Program, $411,905 to expand peer recovery support for young people and families affected by opioid and other substance use disorders.
• From Silenced to Saved, $209,000 to expand services for trafficked youth with substance dependence, including opioid use disorder.
• Juvenile Assessment Center, $199,963.42 to identify young people's risks and match them with the support they need before substance misuse takes hold.
• Sky Ride LLC, $200,000 to provide what the county described as safe, reliable transportation for court-mandated and recovery-related needs.

Together the awards come to $1,448,871.42, roughly the $1.45 million the county announced.

Why a ride counts as treatment infrastructure

The transportation line is neither the largest nor the most technical of the five, but it is the easiest to explain to anyone who has watched someone miss a court date or an intake appointment because the bus did not run on time. Distance is a routine reason people drop out of outpatient care before it starts working, and a contract that pays for the trip removes one of the few barriers a county can actually buy its way past.

The county's opioid council has listed transportation among its priority spending categories, alongside withdrawal management, medications for opioid use disorder, peer support and youth prevention. The Sky Ride contract is the only award in this round that pays for movement rather than counseling, and it is structured to serve patients whose treatment is ordered by a court as well as those who are pursuing it voluntarily.

Peer recovery for families, not only patients

FullCircle's $411,905 is the second-largest award and pays for peer recovery support delivered to families as well as young people. That model relies on people with lived experience of substance use disorder, and it has become one of the most common uses of settlement money nationally because it is inexpensive relative to clinical staffing and reaches households that never make it into a clinic.

The two smallest awards focus on identification: the Juvenile Assessment Center's $199,963.42 for risk screening, and From Silenced to Saved's $209,000 for trafficked youth with substance dependence. Both target adolescents before or at the point of crisis, which is where the settlement rules allow counties to spend on prevention rather than only on treatment.

"Behind every organization here are people whose lives you are helping change, particularly our youth," Commissioner Abe Laydon said in the county's announcement. "Establishing Douglas County's own opioid abatement council allows us to work with partners who understand our community's needs and know what works. We will continue investing these dollars where we see results."

Counties as the spending gatekeepers

Douglas County's awards are one small transaction in a national flow of money that has made local governments the arbiters of addiction policy. Settlement funds from manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies arrive under court orders that restrict them to abatement uses, but within those limits counties decide whether the money buys treatment beds, recovery housing, naloxone or — in cases that have drawn scrutiny elsewhere — police equipment and event sponsorships.

The county's structure channels recommendations through its opioid council rather than through a direct board allocation, a design that puts a review step between an application and a check. The council's published criteria include settlement compliance, community priorities and whether an award expands services for residents who currently cannot get them.

For the five organizations approved Tuesday, the money arrives as the national overdose death toll heads toward 2019 levels after three consecutive years of decline. Youth prevention spending is a bet on the next cohort, and the county has placed more than half of this round's total — the two largest awards, $839,908 combined — with organizations whose work is explicitly built around adolescents in or near recovery.