Could Utah opioid settlement cash help with Salt Lake City’s new homeless campus?

Salt Lake Harm Reduction Project Executive Director MacKenzie Bray spoke with KUER about using opioid settlement funds to help with Salt Lake City’s new homeless campus.

Check out the excerpt below, and click here for the full story from KUER.

Not everyone is on board, including some who work in drug abuse outreach. MacKenzie Bray, executive director of the Salt Lake City Harm Reduction Project, said the opioid settlement money needs to be used as intended.

“It’s meant to reduce the harms of the opioid and overdose epidemic,” she said.

In her view, the proposal to use the funds lacked detail for exactly what it would be used for.

“I have big concerns about it not being used for drug treatment or drug prevention.”

Bray, who lost her brother to opioid addiction, has been critical of how the state and some counties have spent portions of the fund. Items such as law enforcement equipment and, in one case, an animal shelter for people going to rehab have received funding.

She does not want this money misused if it does end up contributing to the homeless campus.

“If there’s clinical evidence for it, if it’s supported in the literature, then I’m all for it,” she said. “But if it’s used for funding a cafeteria or something like that, that’s one where it’s like, no, that’s not the place.”