Twenty two million dollars repay loans for people working in the drug addiction field. About $12,000 per Silencers for pistols. Sixteen dollars for children's book about Spookley's square pumpkin.
The purchases varied widely, but they all came from the same source: money to pay for opioids.
According to an investigation by KFF Health News and researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health And Shatterproofa national non-profit organization dedicated to drug addiction issues.
Money is expected exceed $50 billion for nearly two decades, they were paid by companies that sold prescription painkillers. State and local governments should spend most of these funds on addiction. Settlement agreements even outlined proposed use cases and installed other fencing to restrict unrelated uses—as happened to General Tobacco Dispute Settlement Agreement of the 1990s.
But there is still considerable flexibility, and what is good use for one person may be considered a waste for another.
“People have died for this money. Families have been torn apart for this money. And to not spend it on trying to make our system better so that people don't have to suffer these losses in the future, I think is unconscionable,” he said. Stephen Loydan addiction doctor who once suffered from opioid addiction and has served as an expert witness in several opioid trials.
To compile the most comprehensive national database of settlement costs, KFF Health News and its partners filed public records requests, scoured government websites and extracted cost data, which was then sorted by categorysuch as treatment or prevention. Findings include:
- States and localities spent or allocated nearly $2.7 billion in 2024, according to public data. The bulk of the investment went toward investments that addiction experts consider critical, including about $615 million for treatment, $279 million for overdose-reversal drugs and $227 million for housing-related programs.
- The money is controlled by different entities in each state, and about 20% of it is untraceable in public records.
Explore the database Here.
