Should Ohio reduce penalties for drug possession? Advocates tout bill coming to a vote this week

Jackie Borchardt Terry DeMio
Cincinnati Enquirer
Alison Shuemake of Middletown. She was 18 on Aug. 25, 2015, when she died in her new apartment from a heroin overdose. Her parents, Dorothy and Fred Shuemake, included her daughter's cause of death in her obituary. Dorothy Shuemake has advocated for treatment for people with drug-use disorders ever since. She is in favor of decriminalizing "addiction," she says.

Dorothy Shuemake of Middletown doesn’t know all the ins and outs of Ohio's latest criminal justice reform bill, but she is adamantly opposed to calling people afflicted with addiction criminals.

She’s seen addiction up close, in her own daughter.

Shuemake found her daughter dead from a heroin overdose in her Middletown apartment five years ago. Alison was 18. Her mother called her husband. She called 911. And devastated, she walked back to her daughter’s bedroom.

“I sat with her. I sang to her,” Shuemake said. “And as hard as that was, I am so glad I got that time.”

Allison, called Allie, was a normal teenager who suffered from a chronic medical condition, Shuemake said. She never got arrested for felony drug possession, but it could have happened. And that appalls Shuemake.

“The idea that this is a brain disease doesn’t seem to matter to some people,” Shuemake said. “What punitive measures do we use for any other brain disorder?”

Ohio could soon take its biggest step toward away from the "war on drugs" began in the 1970s. Senate Bill 3, pending in the Ohio House, would reduce penalties for possessing smaller amounts of drugs while keeping stronger penalties for having larger quantities. 

The goal: Get people treatment for their drug addictions and keep them out of prison, which can impact a person's ability to find a job for the rest of their life.

The bill has broad support from opposite ends of the political spectrum, from Koch-backed groups to employment agencies. But law enforcement and judges remain opposed. They say reducing felony possession charges to misdemeanors, punishable by jail time but not prison, will remove an effective tool for nudging people into treatment.

What the bill could change

Senate Bill 3, along with two others on the verge of passage this month, would comprise the largest criminal justice reforms in Ohio in years.

State prisons have operated above capacity for years. Six years ago, legislators began studying how to simplify Ohio's criminal code to prioritize the state's most serious offenders for prison and incentivize offenders to change their behavior before reaching the prison gates.

A 2018 ballot measure that would have decriminalized many drug possession offenses in the Ohio Constitution failed. But lawmakers agreed that low-level drug offenders shouldn't be sent to prison.

Enter Senate Bill 3. The bill would make several changes, including:

  • Reduce fourth- and fifth-degree felony drug possession to unclassified misdemeanors, punishable with a fine and up to 364 days in jail.
  • Double the amount of marijuana someone can possess as a minor misdemeanor without jail time to 200 grams, or about 7 ounces.
  • Convictions for minor misdemeanors don't need to be reported when asked, say for employment, about criminal history.
  • Presume non-violent offenders charged with unclassified drug misdemeanors will be sentenced to a treatment program and, upon completion, the case will be dismissed without a judgment of guilty.

"The real issue here is we’re trying to help first-time low-level drug offenders and probably a few who are both possessors and also side dealers," said Rep. Bill Seitz, R-Green Township.

Tom Synan, is the police chief of the village of Newtown.  He is the co-founder of the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition that started in March of 2015.

Newtown Police Chief Tom Synan, a coordinator for the Hamilton County Addiction Response Coalition, has been advocating for treatment rather than criminal prosecution for people with addiction for several years. Synan said Senate Bill 3 is not perfect but it's a step in the right direction from holding people responsible for their addiction by punishing them to holding them accountable for recovery.

"It is the beginning of a shift to recognizing that we all are better off when we look for more ways to heal addiction rather than just punish it," Synan said. "Sometimes the shift in ideology is one step at a time."

Arguments against the proposal

Nicole Brantner was arrested more than 18 times before she finally got into addiction treatment. She was convicted of a felony and sentenced to a correctional rehabilitation program through the court.

She spent six months in that program before she was released on probation. Brantner said her felony conviction held her accountable to stay clean.

"It was that program that saved my life in every way," Brantner told lawmakers in June. "If it were not for the felony convictions on my record, for those moments in jail totaling 496 days I would be dead."

Brantner's story is the kind of story judges think about when they voice opposition to the bill. Judges say the threat of prison that a felony carries can be what gets someone into treatment, what changes their life around.

The Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio opposes the bill because they say it would hurt their ability to move further up the supply chain after making a lower-level possession arrest.

"Would someone looking at a maximum sentence of 364 days and a nonfelony roll on their supplier?" FOP lobbyist Mike Weinman said.

Local governments would likely spend an unspecified amount more on treatment and jail costs under the bill, as would Medicaid for evidence-based treatment, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission. But it also estimated 2,700 offenders would be kept out of Ohio prisons and save the state of up to $75 million a year. 

"Is this something to celebrate?" Weinman said. "No. The arrests that are occurring now get those who need help into the system."

'I miss her terribly'

Alison Shuemake at 5 at Christmas dinner with her mom, Dorothy Shuemake and dad, Fred Shuemake (to Dorothy's left), in December 2001.

Allie was a high school graduate who had just settled into her first apartment in August 2015. She had a job, she’d purchased her first car. All big steps for someone who'd struggled with addiction disorder. She seemed healthy, her mother said.

Her parents had been fighting for their daughter’s life with addiction for years.

Allie had been to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, to her pediatrician, to counseling, to a treatment center in Indiana. Her addiction was in remission from time to time. Then she’d relapse.

Allie did not accumulate felonies, and even without a criminal background, it took a lot of work for her to get that apartment, that job, as someone with an addiction. It was a hard road for her entire family, who did all they could for her, and still, Allie relapsed.

"She was a joy and she was a challenge and she was funny and smart and complicated,” her mother said. "I miss her terribly."

In a bold move for the time, Dorothy and Fred Shuemake put Allie's cause of death, "heroin overdose," in her obituary notice.

In her daughter's memory, Dorothy Shuemake has continued her advocacy for treatment.

And against a system that punishes those who use drugs.

Shuemake said those who commit violence and other crimes that involve others should face prosecution.

"But for using the drug?" she said, "That shouldn’t be criminalized."

The Ohio House is expected to vote on Senate Bill 3 this week. To contact your lawmaker, check out The Enquirer's guide to following the Legislature.