Kentucky will receive $110 million from The Kroger Company for its role in the state’s opioid epidemic.
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman made the announcement at the Life Learning Center in Covington on Jan. 9. The attorney general’s offices filed the lawsuit against Kroger in February 2024, deciding to do it alone rather than join a multi-state effort against the company. All Kentucky counties will receive some of the settlement money.
Coleman said the office didn’t take this decision lightly. He said Kroger had created a public image of trust, not only in this region but across the commonwealth, but the office’s complaint showed a different story.
According to Coleman, Kroger and its more than 100 pharmacies across Kentucky were responsible for roughly 444 million opioid doses coming into the commonwealth over the 13-year period in question, which is more than 100 opioid doses for every man, woman and child in Kentucky. It amounts to 11% of all opioids distributed in the commonwealth during that period.
“Most shockingly, there was no serious system in place, no internal serious system in place in Kroger to track or report suspicious activities, none,” Coleman said. “No training for staff, no guidelines to prevent abuse. This massive grocery chain that asked for our trust and our business allowed the fire of addiction to spread across the commonwealth, leaving pain and leaving so much brokenness in its aftermath.”
Coleman said that the lack of an internal monitoring system is not the case now and has been changed within Kroger stores across the country.
According to the arrangement created in Kentucky law by the general assembly, half of the $110 million will be transferred directly to cities and counties through a predetermined formula based on population and impact. Coleman said all Kentucky counties will receive some of the funding.
The main use of the funds directed by the legislature is for opioid mitigation. Places like Campbell County have used previous opioid settlement money to fund police social worker positions.
The other half of the dollars will be managed by the Kentucky Opioid Advisory Commission. That commission approved more than $12 million to fund 51 Kentucky organizations for prevention, treatment and recovery programs last year. That includes $500,000 that went to the Life Learning Center.
“At Life Learning Center, we believe in facing problems head-on because behind every statistic is a real person, someone’s child, a sibling or a parent whose life is worth fighting for,” said President and CEO of Life Learning Center Alecia Webb-Edgington. “Righting the wrongs of the past and addressing the root cause of these issues isn’t just important, it’s essential if we want to avoid repeating cycles of pain and loss.”
Coleman said it is rare for an attorney general to stand alone in litigation. Typically, dozens of attorneys general from across the country join forces in an effort. So why did Kentucky branch out on its own this time?
If Kentucky had joined the multi-state effort, Coleman said it would have only gotten around $50 million in settlement money because the payouts are population-based.
“No state in this nation has been as impacted as our commonwealth,” he said. “Given this impact, given the widespread presence, the 11% distribution number from Kroger, I wasn’t willing to allow states like California and New York to get the larger payouts at Kentucky’s expense.”
Deputy Attorney General Rob Duncan said last fall, Kroger made an agreement with 30 states totaling about $104 billion.
“That’s a big number until it’s parsed out to every state, county, city, Native American tribe and other entities that are involved,” Duncan said. “For instance, North Carolina received around $40 million and so did Illinois. The entire state of California was to receive $122 million. The attorney general made the decision early on that Kentucky was not going to get anywhere near what we deserved of the multi-state settlement.”
In terms of injunctive relief, the state’s settlement latches onto the multi-state settlement, which had robust injunctive relief, according to the attorney general’s office. That requires monitoring, reporting, and operating under the suspicious monitoring system. Injunctive relief is a court order that requires a party to do or stop doing something.
