Manatee County could get as much as $30 million from opiod lawsuit settlement

Money has to be used to address effects of epidemic that "severely affected" Manatee County

In my more than 16 years as a newspaper editor in Bradenton, few moments were as sobering as when during the darkest days of the opiod epidemic, we listened to the newsroom’s emergency radio scanner as paramedics responded to one drug overdose after the other.

The smugglers and pushers — as well as the pharmaceutical companies — in the early and mid-2010…