The Mississippi Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council is set to finalize how it recommends spending tens of millions of state dollars Tuesday at 2 p.m. CT inside the Carroll Gartin Justice Building in Jackson.

The meeting can be viewed virtually at this link by entering the password “Council2.” 

The council, formed earlier this year by state lawmakers, is tasked with overseeing most of the money won from companies that contributed to Mississippi’s opioid epidemic — a public health crisis that’s led to over 10,000 deadly overdoses since 2000. State officials have been receiving tens of millions of settlement dollars since 2022 but haven’t spent the money on anything other than attorneys’ fees yet. 

Earlier this year, organizations across the state and country submitted 126 applications for money overseen by the council, which the office of Mississippi Attorney General and Council Chair Lynn Fitch said in November has accumulated to around $100 million. The council members reviewed those applications in private subcommittees this fall and scored them on a 0-100 point scale. 

At the last meeting in November, the members agreed to use Tuesday’s meeting to more thoroughly evaluate 59 applications that scored highly on the scale. They also voted to review a roughly $9 million application for opioid wastewater surveillance, a concept State Health Officer and Co-Vice Council Chair Dr. Dan Edney said had little utility. 

Most of the money requested in the highly-scored applications are coming from organizations with at least one representative on the council. Some council members, applicants without representation and addiction experts said they thought the process has favored committee members’ organizations. Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, told Mississippi Today that members of the council are leaders in addressing the state’s addiction crisis, and it would harm the state’s public health response to exclude them from the application process. 

State law requires the council to submit recommendations to the Legislature by Dec. 7 — 30 days before the start of the 2026 regular legislative session. During the session, lawmakers are expected to approve or deny those recommendations and begin appropriating the state’s opioid settlement money.