Drug Policy

06.20.19

House Bill 205 – Proponent Testimony

By Dan Rogan

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels’ proponent testimony on House Bill 205. This was delivered to the House Criminal Justice Committee on June 20, 2019.

To Chairman Lang, Vice Chair Plummer, Ranking Member Leland, and members of the House Criminal Justice Committee, thank you for this opportunity to present proponent testimony on House Bill 205.

11.09.17

Ohio Marijuana Reform: Progress at Local Level

By Celina Coming

On Tuesday, Athens voters overwhelmingly approved ending all penalties for marijuana possession of up to seven ounces. This ballot measure is a hidden gem in this week’s election results and deserves statewide recognition for expanding civil liberties and moving Ohio a step closer to marijuana legalization, which the ACLU has long supported.

10.13.17

Ohio: Misusing the Inducing Panic Law One Overdose At A Time

By Mike Brickner

Cities across the state are using an old philosophy to address the current opioid crisis: charge drug addicts with a crime. Specifically in Ohio, cities are charging overdose victims with inducing panic, which includes a first degree misdemeanor, up to 180 days in jail and a $1000 fine.

08.03.17

Jeff Sessions is Dead Wrong on Drug Policy, and He May Cost People Their Lives

By Mike Brickner

Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke in Columbus, Ohio on Wednesday to discuss the opioid epidemic both on the state and national level. It is no exaggeration to call it an epidemic. In 2016 alone, over 4100 Ohioans died from opioid overdoses, marking a 36% increase from 2015’s record-breaking number.

07.13.17

Heartless in the Heartland: Opioids and Overdoses

By Mike Brickner

Once again, Ohio is at the heart of it all. There is perhaps nowhere in the nation grappling with the opioid crisis as much as the Buckeye State. In fact, leaders recently filed a lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies, alleging they were misleading the public about the addictiveness of painkillers.

04.12.17

Ohio City Says “Yes” to Arrests, “No” to Stopping Overdose Deaths

By James Kosmatka

The only good thing about Washington Court House arresting naloxone-revived opioid users is that it shows everything wrong with criminal justice today. Since February, this town nestled between Columbus and Cincinnati has been charging overdose victims with “Inducing Panic” after emergency responders revive them.

02.10.17

Packing Prisons Hurts All Ohioans

By Katrice Williams

On Friday, January 27, ACLU of Ohio senior policy director Mike Brickner spoke to participants at a symposium on criminal justice reform, which was held at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Brickner touched on a familiar but too often ignored problem: Ohio’s growing prison population.

10.21.16

Government Not Counting Deaths In Police Custody

By James Kosmatka

Advances in media and technology have brought desperately needed visibility to the pressing issue of police violence. Visibility alone, however, cannot create long-term accountability and transparency in law enforcement. That is why the successful implementation of the Deaths In Custody Reporting Act (DICRA) is crucial.

10.18.16

Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States

By Mike Uth

The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch recently released a startling and heart-breaking report on the drug war called Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States. The title’s “25 seconds” refers to the frequency of drug possession arrests in the United States—not selling or making drugs, simply the act of having a drug or, sometimes, merely drug residue.

02.16.16

Treat heroin with heroin, as Swiss have done

By Mike Uth

Beginning in the 1970’s, Switzerland faced a surge in heroin abuse much like the one we are seeing now in Ohio. Then, as now, the surge devastated families and communities, and was accompanied by increased crime, homelessness, overdose deaths and increased rates of HIV infection.

10.27.15

A Fresh Start to Save Thousands of Ohioans’ Futures

By Shakyra Diaz

A criminal conviction damages a person’s present life and future prospects. From employment to housing, higher education enrollment and student loans, a criminal conviction creates so many barriers to opportunities. Given those startling facts, we can agree that a state prison system operating at 130 percent capacity is unhealthy for those incarcerated and for the state that put them there.

10.15.15

A Fresh Start is Needed for Those Left Behind

By Kimberly Millhoan

With early voting now underway in Ohio, the potential that marijuana may be legalized remains the hottest political topic in our state. With Colorado reporting sales of $100 million in just the last month, it’s ensured that legalization will remain on peoples’ minds here and everywhere else.

10.02.15

Decriminalization Doesn’t Do the Whole Job

By Shakyra Diaz

Michael is 23, African-American and incarcerated because he was caught with a bag of marijuana. Now he’s a “repeat offender” because of a similar arrest years ago. He’s lost his job, freedoms, college plans, perhaps his shot at any decent future.

09.25.15

Issue 3: Now’s the Time to Legalize Marijuana

By Adrienne Gavula

Almost 40 years ago, long before the issue took off around the country, Ohio legislators decriminalized the possession of marijuana up to 100 grams, a not insignificant amount. This was welcome progress, and the hope was lawmakers and police across Ohio would soon focus their attention elsewhere.

09.04.15

Time for Voters in Toledo to Get Sensible about Marijuana

By Steve David

If you live in Ohio and are inclined to follow political news and developments, you are already aware voters will be asked in November whether or not they favor legalizing marijuana in Ohio.

What you probably do not know is Toledo voters have a similar issue on their citywide ballot. 

07.15.15

Facing the Legacy of the War on Drugs in Ohio

By Shakyra Diaz

Over four decades since President Nixon first declared a War on Drugs, the United States continues to struggle with rampant racial inequalities in sentencing people who use drugs. In order to have a system that treats all people equally and justly, we must retreat from the failed policies of the past and end the system of mass incarceration for people convicted of low-level drug offenses.

07.14.15

A Day in Drug Court

By Shakyra Diaz

Several weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Drug Court with fellow ACLU intern, Kyra Schoonover. It certainly was an eye-opening experience for both of us.

How It Works

Before the proceedings began, we met with the judge.

05.08.15

Drug Testing Welfare Recipients Creates, Not Solves, Problems

By Shakyra Diaz

If you spend enough time at the Ohio Statehouse you quickly learn bad ideas have a habit of never going away.

Such is the case with the drug-testing of welfare recipients. Legislation to accomplish this has been introduced in previous legislative sessions, but stalled for unknown reasons.

01.27.15

An End to Highway Robbery? Not Quite Yet

By Shakyra Diaz

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

01.06.15

Is 15 Cents High Enough?

By Kim Schuette

A new year and a new minimum wage.

On January 1, Ohio increased its hourly minimum wage from $7.95 to $8.10—85 cents higher than the federal minimum wage. The tipped wage also increased to $4.05—7 cents higher. This modest increase benefits about 277,000 working Ohioans and is estimated to put more than $36 million back into our economy reports The Columbus Dispatch.

12.10.14

To Defeat Heroin We Need to (NOT) Stay the Course

By Mike Uth

To combat abuse of heroin and prescription opiate pain killers there are several principles we need to keep in mind and actions we need to take.

We must shut down all the pill mill pain clinics, imprison the doctors who run them, and make every other doctor too scared to prescribe opiate pain killers at all.

11.25.14

The Ferguson Near You

By Shakyra Diaz

Like many of our nation’s cities, we find Cleveland a teeming cauldron of hostility. The citizens of the Negro community reflect the alienation of the total community, which has constantly ignored their cries for justice and opportunity and responded to their joblessness, poor housing and economic exploitation with crude methods of police repression rather than compassion and creative programming.

11.20.14

Drug Law Reforms: Ohio Pay Attention!

By Shakyra Diaz

Imagine what would happen if people of different walks of life decided that they were done with the insanity of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs. Imagine if people proclaimed that they were tired of:

» Criminalizing people unnecessarily.

» Tough on crime laws that do nothing to improve safety.

10.01.14

Treating Our Addiction to Mass Criminalization

By Shakyra Diaz

“The United States will never be able to prosecute or incarcerate its way to being a safer nation,” said last week U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, at a conference held by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

09.09.14

The Real Problem in Ferguson

By Mike Uth

Michael Uth is a member of the ACLU of Ohio Board of Directors.

So far, all the news and commentary surrounding the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri have overlooked the biggest reason why incidents like this continue to occur time after time in city after city.

05.09.14

Missed Opportunities: Using Medicaid Expansion at the Local Level to Reduce Costs and Save Lives

By Shakyra Diaz

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) is well on its way to ensuring that all who are eligible for Medicaid leave prison with a Medicaid card in hand.  According to ODRC, 90% of the over 50,000 people incarcerated in state prisons are eligible for Medicaid.

02.27.14

‘We can’t arrest our way out of this problem’

By Shakyra Diaz

I have heard this phrase repeated more times than I can count from police officers, judges, prosecutors, probation officers, sheriffs, and jail administrators; I agree with all of them.

We can’t arrest our way out of this problem.

Our 40 year War on Drugs has come at a tremendous cost, both in human lives and to our local and state budgets.

11.05.13

Standing on the Side of Justice

By Nick Worner

On Saturday, November 2, 2013, a coalition of faith groups, unions, professional associations, community groups, and rights organizations (including the ACLU of Ohio) held a rally at the Ohio Statehouse.

Visit our Facebook album for pictures from the rally.

At this rally, we called on Ohio lawmakers to halt the death penalty, end the war on drugs and the epidemic of mass incarceration, break the many reentry barriers for the formerly incarcerated, and put a stop to “stand your ground” proposals in Ohio.

11.02.13

Giving a Voice to Those Impacted by the War on Drugs

By Shakyra Diaz

Last week, I attended the Drug Policy Alliance’s International Drug Policy Reform Conference held in Denver, Colorado. The Drug Policy Alliance and its talented staff did a masterful job of putting together a conference that gave a voice to many people impacted by the War on Drugs while highlighting the multitude of reasons why this destructive war must end.

10.31.13

We all make mistakes. Some of us pay for them for the rest of our lives.

By Melissa Bilancini

On Saturday, November 2, 2013 a coalition of faith groups, unions, professional associations, community groups, and rights organizations (including the ACLU of Ohio) will hold a rally at the Ohio Statehouse. At this rally, we will call on Ohio lawmakers to halt the death penalty, end the war on drugs and the epidemic of mass incarceration, break the many reentry barriers for the formerly incarcerated, and put a stop to “stand your ground” proposals in Ohio.