Maine is expected to receive about $261 million from settlement agreements through 2038 to address the opioid crisis.
The funds come from national litigation against pharmaceutical companies for their roles in the distribution of billions of highly addictive opioids over a decade that fueled the nation’s addiction epidemic.
Maine was originally expected to receive $230 million, but additional settlements are likely to bring another $30 million.
It’s now four years since the payments started rolling in, so the Bangor Daily News took a look at how things stand.
The state so far has received $83.1 million and spent $33.2 million, according to data from the Maine Opioid Settlement Support Center. The center launched last summer as an information hub to track settlement distributions.
The settlement directs that the money be spent on four categories: addiction prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery efforts.
Under state agreements, half of all settlement money goes to the Maine Recovery Council, 30% to “subdivisions,” which include each county and 21 larger communities, and 20% to the attorney general’s office.
The support center’s spending dashboard as of Wednesday shows the Maine Recovery Council has received $41.8 million and spent $14.3 million. The attorney general’s office has received $17.2 million and spent just over half, while subdivisions as a group have received $24.1 million and distributed just under $10 million.
Some Maine counties also contain separate municipal subdivisions. Penobscot, for instance, includes Bangor, which itself is due to receive $4.36 million through 2038.
Other subdivisions are Auburn, Augusta, Biddeford, Brunswick, Calais, Falmouth, Gorham, Kennebunk, Lewiston, Orono, Portland, Rockland, Saco, Sanford, Scarborough, South Portland, Standish, Wells, Westbrook, Windham and York.
Here’s a look at what each Maine county, including its subdivisions, expects to receive overall.
Maine’s total drug overdoses and fatalities from overdose have trended downward since 2022, according to the Maine Drug Data Hub, a partnership between the state and the University of Maine.
The state in 2022 saw more than 10,000 overdoses and 716 deaths that were either suspected or confirmed to be caused by overdose. A total of 9,654 overdoses and 607 fatalities were recorded in 2023, 8,535 overdoses and 490 fatalities in 2024, and 7,703 overdoses and 390 fatalities in 2025.
Some Maine communities have distributed funds, and others are still figuring out how to designate their portions.
This year, Bangor awarded $640,000 to 16 different recovery projects in March, and in May Aroostook County commissioners voted to spend $209,000 on a traveling school resource officer. Hancock County in February formed a panel to decide how to spend its settlement payments.
Maine’s first recovery high school will open this fall in Fort Kent, funded largely by a grant from the Maine Recovery Council’s settlement funds.
Knox County has spent almost all of its funds, while other counties have used about a third or more of what they’ve been allotted so far. Others — such as Androscoggin, Kennebec and Penobscot — have only used a fraction of what they’ve received.
Here’s how much each county has received and spent so far.