When I started my career as a Greene County assistant prosecuting attorney, heroin was a drug found in the back alleys of big cities. Today, heroin is everywhere in Ohio. It’s delivered like pizza right to the front doors of homes in the suburbs and small towns. People of every age, race, and geographic location are becoming hooked on it, and then killed by it. Officially, in 2013, 2,110 people died from drug overdoses in Ohio. In 2014, the number climbed to 2,482.
A few years ago, my office set up a Heroin Unit to help law enforcement pursue high-level drug traffickers and to work with communities affected by the opiate epidemic. Our Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission (OOCIC), Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), Special Prosecutions Section and drug-abuse outreach specialists work together to help communities fight the heroin problem. We provide local law enforcement and prosecutors with equipment and expertise to help initiate investigations and to help take those investigations beyond street-level dealers to get high up the chain. Such investigations are often beyond the resources of most small and midsize departments. So far, we’ve had a lot of success.
However, we aren’t going to arrest our way out of this. The heroin epidemic is a consumption problem. The Mexican drug cartels and the drug dealers are sophisticated marketers. While heroin starts cheap at about $15, the habit soon becomes expensive to maintain — about $1,500 a day for some. Without the means to buy the heroin, addicts often turn to crime.
This issue of
Criminal Justice Update touches on just a few of the things that my office is doing to reach out to communities struggling in this crisis. The main story tells how we organized a series of “Taking Back Our Communities” conferences and resource fairs to encourage faith-based and community leaders, grassroots organizations, and members of the public to unite against the problem. A Q&A feature on our Heroin Unit offers information on what the group does to help make a difference in this fight. A sidebar reviews the
60 Minutes segment “Heroin in the Heartland,” which put a national spotlight on drug use in Ohio and our efforts to gain the upper hand.
My staff and other state, local, and federal authorities can’t win this battle alone. Everyone in the community needs to be involved at grassroots level to raise awareness, make it harder for dealers to do business, support addicts through treatment, and educate adults and children. We need more local groups, churches, and citizens to rise up and take back their communities. My office can help you get started -- visit
www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/DrugAbuse.
Very respectfully yours,
Mike DeWine
Ohio Attorney General