LEONARDTOWN — Money that drug companies paid to settle opioid lawsuits will now pay for addiction care inside the St. Mary’s County Detention and Rehabilitation Center.
The Commissioners of St. Mary’s County on Oct. 20 approved an agreement with the St. Mary’s County Health Department that sends $170,522 to the jail’s program for medication for opioid use disorder, known as MOUD. The money comes from the Maryland Office of Overdose Response’s Opioid Restitution Fund for fiscal 2027. Commissioners also approved a matching budget amendment, because the grant was not known when the county adopted its fiscal 2027 budget.
The grant requires no local match. Detention center staff told commissioners it will pay for services the jail is legally required to provide.
What the money buys
According to the presentation, the $170,522 covers two kinds of contract staffing:
- An aftercare planning social worker. A licensed clinical social worker will complete mental health assessments and provide behavioral health counseling.
- Registered nurse costs that the jail’s existing grants, including its Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT) grant, do not cover. The nurses handle the program’s data tracking and clinical assessments and provide weekend and holiday coverage.
Warden Mary Ann Thompson was unavailable for the meeting, and detention center staff presented the request. When a commissioner asked whether the money was state or federal, staff explained that the Health Department receives the grant and passes it to the jail through the agreement, and that it is opioid settlement money flowing from the state back down to the counties.
A mandate St. Mary’s helped pilot
Maryland requires local jails to offer opioid treatment medication under Section 9-603 of the Correctional Services Article, which the General Assembly passed in 2019. The law requires jails to screen people for opioid use disorder, stock at least one form of each type of FDA-approved medication, provide behavioral health counseling and build a reentry plan before release that covers medication, peer support and health insurance.
St. Mary’s was in the first group. The law named the Howard, Montgomery, Prince George’s and St. Mary’s detention centers to comply by Jan. 1, 2020, with six more counties following in 2021 and every local jail by 2023.
The jail’s program predates the mandate. In a 2023 presentation to Friends Research Institute, Thompson said the facility started with a Vivitrol grant program in 2016, volunteered as a pilot jail, began continuing inmates on medication when they were booked in 2019 and started offering all three types of medication in September 2020. The same presentation described the work as labor-intensive, saying medication administration takes more than six hours a day, and described problems with inmates trying to divert Suboxone.
Where the settlement money comes from
The Opioid Restitution Fund holds Maryland’s share of national settlements with opioid makers, distributors and pharmacies. According to the state’s settlement overview, Maryland had received about $245.8 million through fiscal 2025 and expects about $670.8 million more over the next 18 years, with payments running through fiscal 2038.
Seventy percent of the money is set aside for local governments, split between direct local payments and targeted abatement grants, and the state keeps 30%. St. Mary’s is a participating subdivision.
The need has not gone away, even as deaths have fallen statewide. Preliminary Maryland Department of Health data count 14 unintentional drug and alcohol intoxication deaths in St. Mary’s in 2025, seven of them opioid-related. Statewide, intoxication deaths fell from 393 in the first quarter of 2025 to 310 in the first quarter of 2026.
Jails are a key point in that picture because people leaving incarceration face a sharply higher risk of overdose in the weeks after release, which is why the state law focuses on continuing medication and planning for reentry. The new social worker position is aimed at that handoff.
Other public safety money
The opioid agreement followed another public safety grant at the same meeting. The St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office told commissioners that the U.S. Department of Justice had awarded it $800,000 to replace its aging mobile command unit, a 2006 vehicle, and asked to spend up to $200,000 in locally forfeited funds toward the project.
