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Rev.
Marcia Dinkins, Ohio Organizing Collaborative & TUSA:
The
Mayo
Clinic has called
the opioid addiction crisis that is killing 115 people a day
in this country “the most important and most serious public
health crisis” facing United States today.
It’s a
crisis we know all too well in Ohio. Ohio is among the top
five states for opioid overdose deaths, with over twice the
national per capita average. In 2017, more than 13
Ohioans died every day.
Yet,
unlike with other public health crisis, when it comes to
addiction, we treat the disease not with healthcare but with
incarceration, turning patients into criminals and creating
new barriers that then impede people’s capacity to recover
and rebuild there lives. This approach is a mistake that
has already cost too many lives.
In Ohio,
we have the opportunity to finally change course and lead
the way to a better direction--one that treats drug
addiction as what it really is: a disease that kills, but
one that can both be prevented and treated to make life
better for millions of families.
It’s time
to stop treating people with addiction like criminals. With
Ohio’s Issue 1, we finally have the opportunity to move in a
different direction and take an affirmative step toward our
collective recovery. Given the breadth of this crisis,
everyone loves someone who is impacted by opioid
addiction and we all have a stake in a shared remedy.
Rev.
John D. Walthall, Pastor of Mt. Ararat Baptist Church,
Toledo Ohio
We are
failing to curtail the opioid crisis through incarceration
because addiction is not a criminal justice issue--it’s
mainly a public health issue.
People
suffering from addiction don’t pose a significant public
safety risk. The sad truth is that more often, addictive
behavior hurts mainly the substance abuser and his/her own
family. Ohio spends more than $1.3 billion per year on a
prison system where far too many people who pose very little
risk to public safety sit behind bars for years. That cost
leaves taxpayers hurting: if Ohio does not reduce prison
overcrowding immediately, taxpayers will have to pay to
build a new prison at a cost of $2 billion and that will
do nothing to guarantee that we’ll have fewer opioid death.
More than
2,600 people are currently in state prison for low-level
drug possession offenses. Sending people struggling with
addiction to prison sometimes removes access to drugs but
sometimes not since imprisoned people can access illegal
substances.
Ohio spends more to re-incarcerate people whose drug abuse
was not effectively addressed earlier. Best justice
practices demonstrate that supervision and treatment at the
local level are more effective than state prison at
addressing addiction and stopping repeat crime committed by
people dealing with addiction.
Issue 1
reduces drug-possession--currently defined as fourth and
fifth-degree felonies to misdemeanors--and requires that the
savings from incarcerating fewer people are re-invested in
services that actually address the addiction crisis
including treatment and rehabilitation for the substance
abuser. Five other states have taken action to reclassify
drug felonies as misdemeanors (Alaska, Connecticut, Utah,
California, Oklahoma) and
a growing body of evidence
shows treatment in the community produces better public
safety results than incarcerating people. Combined with
re-investing resources in public health treatment efforts,
this policy can help increase public safety by allowing law
enforcement to better spend resources on dangerous crimes,
curtailing prison crowding and stopping new prisons from
being built to house substance abusers that won’t be helped
by being behind bars in the first place.
Rev.
William C. Davis, Retired Pastor of Braden UMC Toledo Ohio
Throwing
people in jail isn’t a cure for addiction.
Addiction is a disease,
not a crime. The illness is one that is often rooted in
and/or connected to bigger health issues like mental
illness, genetic predisposition and environmental factors.
Like all disease, without addressing root causes and
pathology, the illness will persist even if you temporarily
stop the symptoms--getting high--by keeping people behind
bars.
We
learned during the 1980’s “war on drugs” that sending
hundreds of thousands of people to prison separates families
and destroys lives but actually does very little to address
addiction. In fact, these policies added new dimensions to
the addiction crisis, creating a cycle that leaves millions
of substance abusers with criminal records that later impede
their capacity to get jobs, reunite with families, finish
school and rebuild their lives.
We should
be learning from our past public policy mistakes, not
repeating them: addiction, lack of access to health care,
poverty and incarceration have already devastated too many
communities.
Poverty
increases the risk of drug use and
poor people are more likely to
be put behind bars.
The ‘war on drugs” policies persist,
still putting over a half
million people behind bars
annually for smoking marijuana, taking pills or other
drugs--exacerbating the cycle.
Brother Author Walker/Friendship Baptist Church/ Co-
President of TUSA
In Ohio,
we have an opportunity to move beyond division and
polarization and work together to pas a policy that creates
a long-term approach to an epidemic that clearly will impact
generations of families.
Issue 1
is an effort to get past blame and past partisanship,
allowing Ohioans to act together to disrupt this cycle and
adopt a strategy that can more meaningfully address
addiction by investing in health care, treatment, and
rehabilitation.
The ballot initiative would require that state funds saved
due to a reduction of inmates, resulting from the
initiative's implementation, be spent on substance abuse
treatment programs, crime victim programs, probation
programs, graduated responses programs, and rehabilitation
programs.
Rev.
Willie L. Perryman, pastor of Jerusalem Baptist Church
When it
comes to the opioid crisis, the real criminals--the
prescription drug companies who manufacture and distribute
massive quantities of addictive pills that have driven ever
more demand for opioids--are still at large. PhRMA isn’t
facing any criminal penalties for their role in creating the
epidemic. In fact, the biggest drug companies just got a
huge reward in the form of tax breaks under the new law that
the president signed last year.
The
largest drug companies got over $6 billion in tax breaks
under the new law this year alone.
While the
drug companies are getting big breaks, Congress is doing
very little to address the opioid crisis beyond lip service
because politicians don’t want to spend the federal money
required on managing the crisis.
Although
President Trump is soon expected to sign a law that will put
around $1 billion a year over the next 10 years into
addressing the opioid crisis--most experts agree that amount
is a drop in the bucket. At the height of the AIDS/HIV
crisis--the last huge public health crisis--Congress spent
over $100 million over ten years--to address the epidemic.
Not only
are the President and Congress failing to take meaningful
action to address the crisis they all keep talking about to
score political points, but over the past two years
Republicans leaders have actually taken us in the wrong
direction by repeatedly trying to repeal the Affordable Care
Act including Medicaid expansion which insures over 700,000
people in Ohio.
Nearly a
million Ohioans that previously had no access to healthcare
now have coverage thanks to Medicaid and the ACA
marketplace, including people struggling with addiction.
Research shows
that the uninsured rate
among people with
opioid-related hospitalizations fell dramatically
in states like Ohio that adopted Medicaid expansion, from
13.4 percent in 2013 (the year before expansion took effect)
to just 2.9 percent two years later (2015). After
neighboring Kentucky expanded Medicaid in 2014, the number
of Medicaid beneficiaries using substance use treatment
services in the state jumped by 700 percent.
The
ACA required states to
include SUD services as a covered Medicaid benefit. It also
required that insurance companies cover mental illness
(including addiction) as an essential health benefit and
stopped insurers from charging people with pre-existing
conditions, like mental illness and addiction, more for
services and treatment.
Pastor
James H. Willis, Sr./ Pastor of St. Paul Baptist Church/
President of TUSA
Passing
Issue 1 is urgent for people struggling with addiction, not
just because putting them in jail won’t help but because
getting treatment will save lives and protect families.
Failing
to pass this measure because of fear-mongering or partisan
politics...... ultimately hurts everyone and damages our
state. We can’t wait any longer for politicians to take
action...... It’s up to the people of our state to take
matters into our own hands..... and make a decision that
could have life-saving consequences...... for hundreds of
thousands of people and their families.
Addiction
is a serious illness, but it’s not a crime......
Putting substance abusers behind bars punishes substance
abusers, families and taxpayers .......but it won’t address
the underlying issues or stem the tide of destruction......
and death that is already washing over our state.... It’s
time to change course and head in a better direction
because, at the end of the day, this crisis is not about
opioids--it’s about saving the people we love.
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