tobacco settlement

At a December 2022 meeting, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors decided to use $63,000 of opioid settlement funds to help cover a budget shortfall. Since settlement payments will arrive annually till 2038, they plan to use it as an ongoing revenue source.

Health & Safety
National

A wasted chance to fight addiction? Opioid settlement cash fills a local budget gap

5:08am August 02, 2023

by Aneri Pattani

State attorneys general vowed the funds would go toward tackling the addiction crisis. But as with the tobacco payouts of the 1990s, local officials have started using them to fill budget shortfalls.

Vanderbilt University professor John Geer sits for a video-taped deposition in 2014, defending his expert witness report which backed up the tobacco industry position that smokers knew of the health risks of smoking as early as the mid-1950s. Academics of

Health & Safety

Some Academics Quietly Take Side Jobs Helping Tobacco Companies In Court

5:55pm October 30, 2019

by Blake Farmer

Faced with lawsuits from sick smokers, tobacco firms argue the health risks were "common knowledge" for decades, and they often pay professors to help make that point as expert witnesses.

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