Governments Spent Opioid ‘Blood Money’ In Shady Ways — Including On Surveillance Cameras, Report Alleges

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%).

This “other” spending includes $150,000 for street lighting in Camden, New Jersey, $130,000 for Flock Safety cameras in Carmel, Indiana, $36,200 for a pickleball court in Gilmer County, West Virginia and at least $84,000 for city insurance, building utilities, vehicle repairs, and other standard city expenses in Mullens, West Virginia, according to the report.

Meanwhile, Syringe Service Programs and Initiatives for Babies Exposed to Drugs in the Womb each received less than 1 percent of opioid settlement spending — despite being two out of nine core strategies recommended in most settlement agreements, the public records cited by KFF Health News show.

In New York, local governments directly control 46 percent of the opioid settlement money. They spent tens of thousands of dollars on surveillance cameras, technology to help police access data on locked cellphones and goggles that simulate being drunk, according to public records obtained by the nonprofit advocacy group Legal Action Center and shared exclusively with KFF Health News, the outlet reported in July.

KFF Health News conducted the investigation alongside the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Shatterproof, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending the addiction crisis. The piece is the latest in the outlet’s “Payback” investigation series, in it has scrutinized the use of opioid settlement money across state and local governments since 2022.

Advocacy organizations and groups argue that these governments lack sufficient oversight to track what these settlement funds are going towards, the report said.

Jasmine Budnella, director of drug policy at VOCAL-NY, an advocacy organization that is tracking settlement money as part of its mission to serve people affected by the war on drugs told KFF Health News that county governments have the chance “to go rogue” with the money and often punt responsibility to other agencies when people raise concerns about accountability.