WFAM Year in Review: Looking Back, Moving Forward (2025)

To wrap up the year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the opioid settlement WFAM work we have accomplished together, thank you for your support, and tease a bit of what is to come. 😬 It's a bit longer than our usual WFAM newsletters but we'll touch on each of the 6 topics we hit on and provide some important updates, including 2024 data from Aneri Pattani's excellent database of publicly available opioid settlement spending.

Topline

$35.7 million in opioid settlement funds have been misspent on items that do nothing to address the overdose crisis. That's a big number and it's just scratching the surface.

This money was diverted from life-saving harm reduction, treatment, and recovery solutions. And as frustrating and devastating as this is, it’s also an opportunity: every dollar exposed is a chance to redirect future spending toward what actually works and hold decision makers accountable.

We’re calling out the opioid setttlement WFAM because no one else was. While others handed out awards for basic compliance, our community tracked the drones, the AEDs, and the surveillance tech.

Our work is opinionated, grounded in ethics and evidence, and unapologetic. Sometimes it's a little goofy as we point out how absurd and harmful this spending is. However, we take out roles very seriously. As always, if we’ve missed something or gotten it wrong, tell us. But we won’t stay quiet while commercial interests rampage these funds and decision makers light it on fire. To that end, we have been working on other ways to present this material so that we can have an impact with diffrent audiences. The newsletter was always just the start. Thank you for joining along for the ride.

Background

We have come a long way since the first newsletter on Sept 10th calling out opioid settlement spending on Dogs, Drones & Donuts🍩. When we started we had just reached 200 WFAM examples (now 610 examples) and around 20 million dollars (now $35.7mil) in misspending. And while this isn't comprehensive (yet!), they give a pretty good picture of what is going on and areas to resist.

Let's look back at the six WFAM topics we covered this year.