The Marion County Board has approved a $10,000 donation from the Opioid Settlement Fund to help the Marion County Drug Court Support Group to get two homes for drug court participants reopened.
State’s Attorney Tim Hudspeth made the request.
“The not-for-profit group presently doesn’t have sufficient funds to get insurance on those houses,” Hudspeth said. “Until they do, they can’t let anybody move into them, because if somebody gets hurt, obviously we’re going to have some problems.”
Hudspeth says the Centralia home can house two drug court participants and the home north of Salem can house four.
“When people come into our drug court program, they’re frequent couch surfers. They stay at their friends’ houses. They’re all using drugs together. Those that come into the drug court program typically want to get clean. Some will do it just because they don’t want to go to prison, and we recognize that and try to weed those out, but the vast majority of people who come in really want to change their life, and we see a lot of success stories that come from that. Not everybody when they come in has a place to live, so these two houses have gone a long way towards helping that goal.
Hudspeth says money from the settlement fund has to be used to assist those with drug problems. The fund still has a $195,000 balance from lawsuit settlements from pharmaceutical companies. Hudspeth emphasized no taxpayer money was involved.
