MARKER: BEFORE NEW MEXICO DEMOCRATS GET ANOTHER DIME, ACCOUNT FOR THE LAST $850 MILLION

Albuquerque, NM — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Larry Marker today demanded full public accounting of more than $850 million in opioid settlement funds already received by New Mexico before Democrats pursue a single dollar of new federal reparations over the DEA fentanyl-walking scandal.

“Governor Lujan Grisham says ‘somebody must pay,'” Marker said. “New Mexico already got paid. More than $850 million to address the opioid crisis—and we have no transparency about where a single dollar of it went. Before she goes to Washington with her hand out for another check, she owes New Mexicans a full accounting of the last one.”

According to OpioidSettlementTracker.com — a nationally recognized public health accountability clearinghouse — New Mexico has earned a rating of 0% on its Expenditure Report Tracker, meaning the state has made zero commitment to public reporting on how settlement funds are spent. By contrast, neighboring Colorado makes 100% of its opioid settlement spending public through an online dashboard. Arizona, Wyoming, California, Georgia and Iowa have all committed to transparency.

New Mexico has not.

“Zero percent,” Marker said. “That’s New Mexico Democrats’ transparency score on $850 million meant to save lives from the exact crisis they’re now pretending to be outraged about. Colorado posts every dollar online. New Mexico won’t show you a thing. A LOT of money that was supposed to help people has disappeared into a bureaucratic black hole.”

The accountability failures run deeper. The state’s own Legislative Finance Committee found that contingency-fee legal contracts stripped nearly $250 million from settlement awards before the money ever reached New Mexicans, including $159 million in lawyers’ fees from the Walgreens settlement alone. The New Mexico State Ethics Commission found that “several public bodies” had illegally sidestepped the state’s procurement code in making those deals. A separate LFC report found that settlement-funded treatment programs were underused and lacked outcome data.

“The lawyers get paid first and get paid fastest,” Marker said. “The families of overdose victims got a press conference. That is the New Mexico Democrat model of accountability, and now they want taxpayers to hand them another fortune and trust that this time will be different.”

“Let’s be clear about what’s actually being proposed here,” Marker said. “Federal agents watched fentanyl deals go down in Albuquerque in real time. A decorated DEA agent blew the whistle and had his career destroyed for it. Families buried their children. And the Democrat solution is to sue the federal government for a cash settlement—paid for by the taxpayers—and hand the money to the same bureaucracy that already lost $850 million without a trace. That is not accountability. The people responsible need to be investigated, prosecuted, and where the law allows, imprisoned. A check doesn’t do any of that; it just makes the whole thing go away. Which is exactly what they want.”

New Mexico is on pace to surpass last year’s overdose death total, itself the worst increase in the nation, by another 24% this year.

“$850 million in. Worst overdose crisis in the country. Zero public reporting,” Marker said. “Show us the money. Every dollar, every contract, every lawyer’s fee. If Democrats in Santa Fe won’t do it voluntarily, I’ll go to Washington and make sure someone forces them to.”

Larry Marker is a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in New Mexico.

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