‘You’re doing this wrong’: Bureaucracies spend opioid settlement cash on pickleball court, Flock cameras

A pot of alleged “blood money” settlements for opioid addiction survivors is reportedly getting passed around by government agencies across the nation and spent in a questionable manner, a new report alleges. Through a yearlong investigation, KFF Health News uncovered a number of expenditures with “tenuous ties to addiction,” among about 17,500 expenses, a Thursday report from the outlet shows. Thirty-three percent of opioid settlement spending — totaling $1.2 billion — was used for “other” purposes, per the report. This was the largest such category of spending, ahead of “warm handoff programs and recovery services” (21%) and “medicaid-assisted treatment and other treatment” (14%).

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