Opioid settlement money is just not enouch to heal their community

livemint.com:

A detox center. Aid for an overflowing jail. An extra detective’s salary.

These are a few of the things people in Whitley County, Ky., would like to fund with their small share of billions of dollars in settlement money from companies accused of fueling the opioid crisis. But county leaders are confronting a dispiriting reality: The funds cover a fraction of their wish list. Some of their projects likely aren’t even eligible because of confusion over restrictions on how the money can be used.

As a result, Whitley County’s funds are sitting unspent. “This community has been so damaged over the years, the money is not going to come close to completely healing all the problems that were created," said Pat White Jr., the county’s judge-executive, a position akin to mayor. Officials around Appalachia are reaching similarly underwhelmed assessments of the potential for settlement funds to help their constituents.

Meanwhile, the opioid crisis—which started with pain pills and is now fueled by fentanyl—continues killing at a record pace. National settlements with companies including Johnson & Johnson, Teva and Cardinal Health are slated to pay more than $50 billion over many years. The money is divided among thousands of jurisdictions, and locals say the portions trickling down to some of the hardest-hit communities—including poor, rural areas in the eastern U.S.—are a feeble match for the scale of the problem.

In 2017, when fatalities were significantly lower, costs nationwide topped $1 trillion, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis. In Kentucky, the estimated cost from deaths and lives undermined by addiction that year exceeded $24 billion. Per-capita costs there were among the nation’s highest.