The opioid epidemic has killed hundreds of thousands of people across the United States. The five-part "Black Box" podcast series tells listeners about the tens of billions of dollars from lawsuits against some of the country's biggest companies for their role in the crisis, and about Mississippi's early management of its portion of the money. "Black Box" features testimonials from people in recovery and friends and family of loved ones who overdosed. Many feel left out of Mississippi's opioid settlement spending process.

But every state in the country is getting some of these funds, and each is spending them differently. In this bonus conversation, hear the host of "Black Box" Allen Siegler talk to Katie Jane Fernelius of Verite News, Alena Maschke from The Current, and Drew Hawkins with Gulf States Newsroom, who are covering how the money is being spent in Louisiana, and elsewhere.

You can find more of Allen, Katie, Alena and Drew's coverage at their respective newsrooms:

https://veritenews.org/

https://thecurrentla.com/

https://www.wwno.org/

If you or a loved one struggles with addiction, you can find treatment options in your area at findtreatment.gov or by calling the national helpline at 1-800-662-4357.

In a series of frantic developments at the end of the 2026 legislative session, Mississippi lawmakers abruptly changed the process for spending the state's opioid settlement funds. Public health officials and advocates who had spent years pushing for the money to be spent wisely are frustrated and concerned as more settlement money gets spent across the state.

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After years of the state sitting on the funds, the Mississippi State Legislature created "The Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council" to provide recommendations on how to spend most of the state's settlement dollars. In a process almost everyone involved described as rushed, the council tries to vet applications from organizations across the state vying for funding. But concerns mount. Decisions are hastily made. Opportunities for conflicts of interest open up. And those with decades of personal and professional addiction experience don't know if their perspectives will be rewarded.

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Mississippi Today doesn't stop investigating opioid settlement funds in one county. Over the summer of 2025, the newsroom expanded its search to every Mississippi town, city and county receiving the lawsuit money. After having heated arguments with government officials and filing multiple ethics complaints, its journalists account for nearly all of the funds Mississippi's local governments have received three years into the payments. And the picture isn't pretty. It's the worst in the country. One addiction doctor said, "From a public health perspective, this is complete and utter bullshit."

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Mississippi began receiving millions of dollars in opioid settlement funds in 2022. While the State Legislature and the Attorney General spent years leaving a large chunk of the funds untouched in a bank account, cities and counties across Mississippi were given a portion of the money to spend however they saw fit. In South Mississippi, a county sheriff heard about the funds, and quietly asked his local leaders for money to support his law enforcement efforts. But these purchases weren't run by the South Mississippi families who've suffered most from the addiction crisis — Mississippi Today had to tell them that after the money had gone out the door.

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For two decades, a corporate chain of some of America's most powerful companies pushed highly additive opioids into the hands of American families. Some spent the 1990s and 2000s heavily marketing and downplaying the danger of opioid prescription painkillers, while others looked the other way as the products they called medicine led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. By 2021, after states sued them, the companies began agreeing to legal settlements that paid out billions of dollars of reparations for the opioid epidemic. Mississippi is expected to receive over $400 million dollars of these penance payments, but a devastating question looms: will this money benefit Mississippians who've suffered most from the worst drug crisis in modern American history?

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After decades of opioid overdoses that ravaged the country, the state of Mississippi is being awarded hundreds of millions of dollars by the very companies that contributed to one of the country's worst modern public health epidemics. Now, critical questions loom over the cash: Will this money be used in ways that honors the epidemic's victims? And can the public trust powerful decision-makers across Mississippi to effectively confront the crisis?

Series premiers July 21.

Coming soon from Deep South Today