Lorain Opposes Drug Amendment

To the Editors:

At their meeting of Sept. 19, 2002, the members of the Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board of Lorain County unanimously voted to oppose State Issue 1, a proposed Drug Offenders Amendment to the Ohio Constitution.
The Board opposes the proposed amendment because it is unsafe and would create many problems for justice and treatment professionals. It ignores current sentencing laws in Ohio that provide treatment in lieu of incarceration for qualified offenders.
The lengthy amendment is unsafe because it applies to qualified offenders only. The amendment ignores the treatment needs of alcoholic offenders. It says nothing about drug abuse prevention and education and is unclear in its application to juvenile offenders.
Additionally, it takes away current powers judges use to deal effectively with offenders who ignore or disrupt treatment. It also takes away important aspects of treatment providers’ control of offenders in counseling programs.
If passed, it effectively wipes clean previous drug offense records, thereby making many offenders “first-timers”. It drastically reduces maximum incarceration time to only 90 days.It does not require drug testing as a measure of successful completion of treatment.
It mandates expungement of drug offense records under certain conditions. Its expungement provision would allow people with past drug offenses–including doctors, childcare workers, airline pilots and others with sensitive jobs–to hide their record from most employers.
It intensifies the revolving door between treatment and court systems. It states that in addition to possession or use charges, offenders also accused of non-violent crimes, like theft, breaking and entering or fraud, should be eligible for treatment instead of incarceration. It would order the state to appropriate $247 million over six years to pay for treating qualified offenders, on top of current expenditures for drug and alcohol treatment, regardless of whether or not the amount of spending makes sense or the treatment is effective.
The proposed amendment establishes treatment as a constitutional right and a priority for certain drug offenders while those who seek treatment will have to wait in a much longer line. No detail of this 6,500-word amendment – longer than the U.S. Constitution – can be changed except through another constitutional amendment.
Regardless of other pressing budget priorities, the state would have to significantly increase spending on drug treatment of offenders. Ohio already spends $172 million a year on alcohol and drug addiction treatment, and the current state laws already allows intervention instead of incarceration for low-level drug offenders.

–Elaine Georgas,
Executive Director
Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services Board of Lorain County

 

October 11
November 1

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