Anti-gay Facebook post protected, ACLU says

YOUR SCHOOLS /

The ACLU of Ohio might not agree with a gay slur that a Columbus schools employee posted on social media, but it is defending his right to say it.

The civil-rights organization issued a news release upon hearing that Chris Dodds, a garage assistant supervisor with Columbus City Schools, might be fired because of an anti-gay post he made on the official Facebook page of the Columbus Pride Parade and Festival.

Dodds, 48 and an employee since 2004, had posted on Friday, “I hope

or similar manmade drugs. Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin.

“Fentanyl is driving this,” Ortiz said. “We’re seeing more cocaine in there, too.”

Columbus Health Commissioner Teresa Long is astounded the opioid epidemic continues to grow.

“It feels like a tsunami is coming over our community,” Long said.

“In my career, this is the largest number of producers of deaths I’ve seen.

More than HIV, more than homicides.”

Several of the coroners in the more populated counties email one another when drug overdoses spike in their areas as a way to alert others, Ortiz said. Over this past weekend, Franklin County didn’t have an abnormally high number of overdoses deaths, Ortiz said, but others did. Summit County was so hard hit, she said, it had to use a temporary morgue to hold all of the bodies.

“The only positive is we’re not as high (numerically) as they are,” Ortiz said.

Research by The Dispatch shows at least 4,149 Ohioans died of unintentional drug overdoses in 2016 — a 36 percent increase from 2015, when Ohio easily led the nation in overdose deaths.

The cause for the frightening statistics, Long said, isn’t simple.

“We know that this is a substance-abuse disorder,” Long said, stressing that addiction is a brain disease that can be treated and cured.

“It’s really complicated and multifaceted,” Long said. “It’s really important to share with the public how important this is.”

Ortiz’s announcement on Tuesday came a day before a group of agencies from Franklin County and the city of Columbus meets to unveil a plan on how to pool resources to better attack the heroin and opioid epidemic.

Police and emergency workers complain that there aren’t enough treatment beds in Franklin County, creating a waiting list that often results in overdose cases leaving the hospital before a bed becomes available.