KFF Health News November 7, 2025
Twenty-two million dollars to repay loans for people working in the addiction field. About $12,000 for gun silencers. Sixteen dollars for a children’s book about Spookley the Square Pumpkin.
The purchases varied widely but they all came from the same source: opioid settlement money.
The cash, which comes from companies accused of fueling the overdose crisis, was used in more than 10,500 ways last year, according to an investigation by KFF Health News and researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Shatterproof, a national nonprofit focused on addiction.
The money is expected to exceed $50 billion over nearly two decades, paid by companies that sold prescription painkillers. State and local governments are meant...
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