Seven years ago, as a candidate to serve as Colorado’s Attorney General, I traveled to the San Luis Valley to meet with Alamosa County Sheriff Robert Jackson. He informed me that 90% of those in the county jail were struggling with opioid use disorder. And he said the Valley had no drug treatment center to help those struggling with addiction.
The tremendous suffering in the Valley inspired me to work hard on addressing the opioid crisis.
Beyond holding Big Pharma accountable and making them pay over $770 million to the State to account for the devastation they’ve caused, we developed a first-in-class framework for spending the opioid settlement funds transparently and effectively so they best help us recover from this crisis.
This framework was recognized as a model by both the John Hopkins School of Public Health and the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Show for being one of the few states that spent these critical funds transparently.
Last month, I returned to the San Luis Valley to celebrate the opening of the Valley’s first drug treatment center, appropriately named “Hope in the Valley.”
