Issue 1 foes exaggerate drug courts’ impact

THE AD: WHERE TO SEE IT: TV stations statewide through Election Day. VIDEO: The ad opens with a tight shot of Shea (no last name given), a heroin addict in recovery. Soft music plays while she speaks to the camera, gazes out of the window, plays the piano and strolls a leafy walkway. SCRIPT: “If it weren’t for my arrest and a tough-love judge, I wouldn’t be alive today. Heroin controlled my life. Then, fortunately, I got arrested. Ohio’s justice system gave me treatment and a support team led by a judge that guided me to recovery. But Issue 1 has a loophole that will take that away and undo the programs that saved my life and countless others. Please don’t make a deadly mistake. Vote no against Issue 1.” ANALYSIS: Opponents say the intentions of Issue 1 are laudable enough — to reduce the number of drug addicts in prison and use the money that’s saved to add treatment capacity in the face of Ohio’s opioid crisis. But the opponents say the constitutional amendment won’t achieve those goals and will do unintended harm in several ways, including by undercutting the potency of Ohio drug courts. There’s broad agreement that jails and prisons are far from the best places to treat addiction, so the ad appears to be referring to drug courts — programs that some defendants can voluntarily enter. Judges closely monitor their cases, and they have leverage to make sure addicts stay clean by threatening them with jail time. Backsliding is the rule rather than the exception with opioid addiction, and drug courts have a powerful tool to enforce compliance. Drugcourt supporters say Issue 1 would vastly weaken that tool by reducing many felony possession charges to misdemeanors and disallowing prison time until three offenses are committed in a twoyear period. But the exaggeration comes when Shea says “countless” people will be harmed if drug courts are weakened. At a forum last month, Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Stephen L. McIntosh, the head of the local drug court, conceded that his program has the capacity for just 50 people at a time, and of that number, only about 10 will graduate within 18 months. Those aren’t big numbers in a county that saw 520 opioid deaths in 2017.

“Shea,” an ad opposing Issue 1, which would amend the Ohio Constitution to reduce some drug-possession crimes and provide a path for many inmates to reduce their prison sentences.