{"id":20421,"date":"2025-11-13T13:24:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T13:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=20421"},"modified":"2025-11-13T13:24:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T13:24:38","slug":"how-opioid-settlement-money-turned-into-a-600k-party-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=20421","title":{"rendered":"How Opioid Settlement Money Turned Into a $600K Party Fund"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;The town of Irvington in Essex County, New Jersey, was hit hard by the opioid crisis. In 2023, the county&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nj.gov\/health\/populationhealth\/opioid\/sudors.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recorded<\/a>&nbsp;459 drug overdose deaths, 401 of them opioid-related\u2014the most deaths of any county in the state. Despite this predicament, Irvington officials spent most of their more than $1 million share of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/reason.org\/commentary\/best-practices-to-prevent-misuse-of-opioid-settlement-funds\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">opioid settlement funds<\/a>&nbsp;not on treatment, prevention, or recovery programs, but on a pair of summer concerts with DJs, luxury trailers, and catered food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The town billed the concerts as &#8220;Opioid Awareness Day,&#8221; but they appeared designed more to promote awareness of Mayor Tony Vauss. His name topped the event&#8217;s promotional materials, and, as the State Comptroller later noted, &#8220;no opioid-related information appeared on stage, though two large posters of Mayor Vauss flanked it.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/10\/31\/how-opioid-settlement-money-turned-into-a-600k-party-fund\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/10\/31\/how-opioid-settlement-money-turned-into-a-600k-party-fund<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The town of Irvington in Essex County, New Jersey, was hit hard by the opioid crisis. In 2023, the county recorded 459 drug overdose deaths, 401 of them opioid-related\u2014the most deaths of any county in the state. Despite this predicament, Irvington officials spent most of their more than $1 million share of opioid settlement funds not on treatment, prevention, or recovery programs, but on a pair of summer concerts with DJs, luxury trailers, and catered food.<\/p>\n<p>The town billed the concerts as &#8220;Opioid Awareness Day,&#8221; but they appeared designed more to promote awareness of Mayor Tony Vauss. His name topped the event&#8217;s promotional materials, and, as the State Comptroller later noted, &#8220;no opioid-related information appeared on stage, though two large posters of Mayor Vauss flanked it.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/10\/31\/how-opioid-settlement-money-turned-into-a-600k-party-fund\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[961,342,66,65],"class_list":["post-20421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-cities","tag-opioid","tag-opioid-epidemic","tag-opioids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20422,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20421\/revisions\/20422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}