Pima County and Tucson outline regional opioid response; county reports $24M received and expanded jail MAT program

Pima County Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francisco Garcia told the Tucson council on Dec. 10 that the county and its partners have been building an opioid‑response system for years and are now coordinating settlement dollars via intergovernmental agreements (IGAs) with participating jurisdictions, including the city of Tucson.

Garcia said the county has received about $24,000,000 in opioid‑settlement funds to date — amounts that have arrived mostly since March 2024 — and cautioned that earlier national estimates of $80 million to $88 million for the region may be overstated because some manufacturers have reduced payments due to bankruptcies. He offered Mallinckrodt as an example, saying expected proceeds dropped from several million dollars to roughly $300,000.

The county has used or budgeted settlement and other funds for a range of initiatives. Garcia listed recent actions: issuing RFPs for mobile medication assisted therapy (MAT) for hard‑to‑reach and rural communities, soliciting MAT services for pregnant and parenting people, procuring roughly $153,000 of Narcan for distribution, and supporting community outreach and peer‑support staffing. He also noted the Pima County Board of Supervisors set aside up to $3,000,000 for expansion of the jail MAT program.

Garcia reported that since expanding inductions in July 2023 the jail program now serves 603 MAT patients and that monthly suspected overdose EMS sendouts have fallen from about 60–70 per month to under 20 per month in recent months, according to the county medical‑examiner dashboard. He described the county’s priority areas as prevention for at‑risk youth and families, continuity of care from pre‑arrest through post‑release, and convening broader stakeholder engagement to refine priorities.

Council members asked whether mobile MAT would operate inside the city; Garcia said the initial deployment focuses on rural and outlying communities but that scaling into parts of the city is a possible future step. He and council members also discussed long‑acting injectable MAT formulations and the need for additional detox capacity to serve people who are floridly intoxicated in public spaces.

Lee Hopkins, representing the city’s Community Safety, Health and Wellness program, outlined a $1.6 million Bureau of Justice Assistance grant supporting overdose follow‑up and recidivism prevention and highlighted coordinated Narcan distributions and quarterly outreach by Tucson Fire’s TC3 team.

Garcia and city staff said no final spending plan has fixed every detail yet; many programs will require additional planning and collaboration among jurisdictions before settlement funds are fully committed.