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
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