}

Every person has innate dignity, and we know our well-being is intertwined. Right now misguided drug policy – that prioritizes criminalization and incarceration – is harming our communities and taking the lives of too many Ohioans. Every fatal overdose is a policy failure caused by the deadly and racist War on Drugs.

We, the undersigned, demand the Ohio state legislature listen to communities most affected by this crisis and implement life-saving policies and programs that protect our loved ones and preserve life. 

Ten Policy Demands for Harm Reduction

1. Saving a life from overdose shouldn't be a crime. Expand Ohio’s Good Samaritan policy, which protects people from prosecution when they seek emergency care for a person experiencing an overdose.
2. Everyone should be able to save a life from overdose. Distribute overdose reversal medication to people most at risk.
3. People who use drugs need healthcare, not stigma. Increase state funding for community-based syringe service programs by $1,000,000.
4. Jailing people for being poor is wrong and increases risk of overdose. End cash bail and pretrial confinement.
5. Care, not confinement. Reclassify low-level drug charges from felonies to misdemeanors.
6. Keep families together. Fund kinship care for children, on par with foster parenting.
7. Create accountability for abusive and racist policing funded by the drug war. End qualified immunity.
8. People who use drugs deserve a voice in their healthcare. Provide universal access to naloxone training and all FDA-approved forms of medication assisted treatment in all state-funded programs, including Ohio’s prisons.
9. Clean slates save lives and build futures. Implement “clean slate” policies that reduce the punitive long-term discrimination based on a criminal record.
10. Housing for everyone -- always. Prohibit eviction within 90 days of an overdose or other medical emergency.

Sponsored by: ACLU OH, Advocating Opportunity, Black Appalachian Coalition, Black Women Rising, Brave, Caracole, City of God, Central Ohio Harm Reduction, First Capital Cornerstone of Change, Harm Reduction Ohio, Heartland Conference United Church of Christ, InterReligious Task Force on Central America, Nelsonville Voices, Never Alone Ohio, Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition, Ohio Council of Churches, OhioCAN, Opportunities Peoples Justice Leaders, Policy Matters Ohio, River Valley Organizing, SURJ Ohio, The Faith Movement, The Freedom BLOC, Truth and Destiny