State and local governments spent about $3.7 billion in opioid settlement funds last year. That’s more than the median annual income of 42,000 American families combined. The money comes from companies that were sued for aggressively pushing painkillers and fueling the opioid crisis. Large amounts went to addiction treatment, recovery housing, and other initiatives that many public…
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… Large amounts went to addiction treatment, recovery housing, and other initiatives that many public health researchers and families affected by the crisis agree fit the spirit of the settlements — to save lives and remediate the problem…
But other expenditures had tenuous ties to addiction, including:
-$150,000 for street lighting in Camden, New Jersey.
- $130,000 for Flock cameras in Carmel, Indiana.
- At least $84,000 for city insurance, building utilities, vehicle repairs, and other standard city expenses in Mullens, West Virginia.
- $36,200 for a pickleball court in Gilmer County, West Virginia.
KFF Health News uncovered these expenditures among about 17,500 examined through a yearlong investigation with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Shatterproof, a national nonprofit focused on addiction. The team filed public records requests, scoured government websites, and extracted expenditures, which were then sorted into categories such as treatment or prevention. The result is the most comprehensive national database documenting how opioid settlement money was used (or left unspent) in 2025.
