SPRINGFIELD — The National Safety Council gives Illinois high marks for steps it’s taking to battle the opioid crisis, but questions remain on if the funds are there to continue the work.
Because of Illinois’ financial dire straits, state government can only spend so much to battle the opioid epidemic.
Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s David Hitchcock said the crisis is putting a strain on government finances.
“We’re particularly worried that any area of the budget that grows is an unexpected increase in cost,” Hitchcock said.
But National Safety Council President and CEO Deborah Hersman said there are examples in Illinois of local governments stepping up to fill the void where state government can’t.
“Whether it’s using Naloxone for their emergency responders or having diversion programs to make sure that people who might otherwise end up in the criminal justice system end up getting effective treatment,” Hersman said, noting that one of the biggest problems is 80 to 90 percent of people who become addicted to opioid painkillers don’t have access to treatment. “There are definitely challenges all over the state. This epidemic knows no age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, whether you live in a rural or urban community. Everyone is impacted.”

Illinois is on the right path to dealing with the opioid epidemic, Hersman said.
“In our State of Safety report, we actually graded the states on what they are doing,” she said, “and Illinois actually is doing a lot of the right things when it comes to passing laws and regulations.”
Illinois has continuing education for prescribers of opioids, a prescription drug monitoring program, and the state measures expanding on who can administer overdose counteracting drugs.
Finding tax dollars for other resources may be hard to come by with the state’s abysmal finances, however.
Hitchcock said the increased taxpayer cost won’t ding Illinois’ credit rating, “but it’s the growth that’s a concern, so we need to follow and see what sort of growth might occur in this area for states that might be most affected.”
“We’re surprised at how many states don’t have substantive reserve funds,” Hitchcock said. “Any sort of increase could be a concern.”
Illinois has no reserves. S&P has previously noted in rating the state’s bonds that it has a massive pension liability exceeding $130 billion that puts a strain on its ability to fund other services.
“It’s a marginal increase,” Hitchcock said of the growing public cost of the Opioid crisis, “but one that makes it that much more difficult to balance the budget. They’ll have to find some other place in their budget to cut to make up for any increase of any sort.”
Illinois’ bonds are a notch above junk status.
More information about the opioid epidemic and how you can protect yourself and your family can be found at the National Safety Council’s website at http://stopeverydaykillers.nsc.org/.