The District is expected to receive more than $31 million to help people recover from opioid addiction as part of a multi-billion dollar agreement with the Sackler family, the owner of OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma.

The Sacklers agreed to pay between $5.5 billion and $6 billion to states to settle thousands of lawsuits over the opioid crisis, according to a tentative agreement filed Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said the city will spend the money on supporting victims of the opioid crisis. It’s too early to say which programs or organizations might receive funding through the agreement, he said, but his office will prioritize directing resources to Black and brown communities, which have been disproportionately impacted by the addiction crisis.

“We know in the District of Columbia, the opioid crisis is quite severe,” Racine said in an interview. “We need to be thoughtful and creative in how we get resources to the people who are suffering.”

The proposal is still subject to further approval by at least one federal judge. If approved, the District could start receiving some of the settlement money in about a year, according to Racine. The money would be paid out over 18 years.

In return for directing money to jurisdictions, the Sacklers would be shielded from current and future lawsuits connecting them to the opioid crisis. The agreement would not protect the Sacklers from criminal charges.

The settlement is an increase from the $4.3 billion the Sacklers agreed to pay in a proposed agreement last year.

Racine joined the attorneys general of eight states to reject that proposal, even though other states agreed to it. That group of attorneys general successfully appealed the agreement, arguing the settlement amount did not go far enough to hold members of the Sackler family accountable.

Under the initial agreement, Racine said D.C. was slated to receive about $8 million. He said that proposal gave fewer dollars to jurisdictions with smaller populations, regardless of the severity of the crisis locally.

“We fought that initial settlement because we found it to be inadequate to the problems that District residents confront around opioids,” he said.

The District, like other localities across the country, has experienced a surge in fatal opioid overdoses in recent years. In 2019, the District recorded the fourth highest opioid overdose death rate in the country, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Sackler family profited billions of dollars through its business, Purdue Pharma, by selling OxyContin, an opiate painkiller stronger than morphine.

Advocates, lawmakers and public health experts have blamed Purdue Pharma’s aggressive marketing of the drug for fueling the country’s opioid addiction crisis.

More than 932,000 people in the U.S. died from fatal opioid overdoses from 1999 through 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a statement attached to the settlement, the Sackler family maintained they did not do anything wrong.

“While the families have acted lawfully in all respects, they sincerely regret that OxyContin, a prescription medicine that continues to help people from chronic pain, unexpectedly became part of an opioid crisis that has brought grief and loss to far too many,” the statement said.

The District has taken legal action against several other companies over their role in facilitating the opioid crisis. Last week, Racine announced the city is expected to receive $47 million total in settlement money from Johnson & Johnson, which manufactures opioids, and three leading opioid distributors.