Last Week Tonight host looks into spending by state and local authorities of $50bn from settlements in the opioid crisis
John Oliver on opioid settlement money: ‘This is basically all the blood money we’re getting, making it especially important that we spend it well.’John Oliver on opioid settlement money: ‘This is basically all the blood money we’re getting, making it especially important that we spend it well.’episode to checking in on the opioid epidemic, which experts consider to be in its fourth wave in the US.
“Getting to this point wasn’t easy,” he explained, “and involved consolidating thousands of lawsuits filed by various government entities in what’s been called ‘the most complicated litigation in the history of complex litigation’.” Such complex litigation, of course, is “a bat signal for this show”, he joked. “Something so boring it’s genuinely kind of hot.”Now that the settlements have been won, there’s a host of issues in what to do with them.
Oliver looked back on class-action lawsuits against tobacco companies in the 1990s, which are now considered the model of what not to do. The settlements were expected to provide a significant amount of the funding to reduce tobacco use, but there were no binding requirements on how the money would be spent. In practice, most states used the money as a slush fund to cover budget shortfalls, subsidize tax cuts or support general government services.
Oliver cited experts’ recommendations for how to spend the money: hire and train more counsellors and peer specialists for addiction; expand access to medication-assisted treatment; fund harm reductions tools such as naloxone, fentanyl test strips and sterile syringes.
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