HELP, NOT JAIL, URGED FOR SOME DRUG OFFENDERS

National Group Wants Ohioans To Vote On Relaxed Penalties

COLUMBUS - Do nearly 5,000 people - convicted over the past two years of
drug possession on the lowest rung of felonies - belong in Ohio's
prisons?

Next year, you could answer that question in the voting booth.

The Campaign for New Drug Policies, a cash-rich movement behind the
success of California's Proposition 36 last fall, has stepped up efforts
to put a similar ballot initiative before Ohioans in 2002. The proposal
would mandate treatment over incarceration for nonviolent first- and
second-time drug offenders.

Campaign Executive Director Bill Zimmerman said polling conducted in
April by the California-based organization showed well over half of
Ohioans favored relaxed penalties for first- and second-time drug
offenders.

Zimmerman said the organization will decide late this summer whether to
target Ohio, Michigan and Florida for ballot issues in November 2002 as
part of a national strategy bankrolled by a wealthy trio including Peter
B. Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance Corp. in Mayfield; financier
George Soros; and University of Phoenix founder John Sperling.

Last year, Lewis was arrested in New Zealand and charged with possession
of more than three ounces of marijuana and marijuana resin. He made a
contribution to a drug rehabilitation center in Auckland and the charges
were "discharged without conviction."

Lewis, Soros and Sperling donated close to $5 million to the successful
California campaign, continuing their efforts to relax drug policies
they consider outdated. Zimmerman expects that an Ohio campaign would
cost less.

He said Ohio, Michigan and Florida are being considered because they are
heavily populated and allow ballot initiatives.

According to Zimmerman, the Campaign for New Drug Policies has had
victories in other states with 12 initiatives on topics ranging from
legalizing the medical use of marijuana to curbing police authority to
confiscate goods from alleged drug criminals.

"Ultimately, this problem can only be solved for the nation through
congressional action," Zimmerman said. "So it is important for us to
demonstrate that there is public demand for drug reform that crosses the
entire nation."

Stacey Frohnapfel, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Alcohol and
Drug Addiction Services, said an initiative patterned after
California's, set to take effect July 1, would be "a step back for
Ohio."

The number of drug offenders in state-run treatment programs has grown
dramatically in Ohio in the past decade, from 43,000 a year in 1989 to
100,000 a year in 2000, Frohnapfel said.

Meanwhile, the state's network of courts with specific drug-case duties
has risen from one in 1989 to 42 today.

"We would like to continue to grow the drug court system, which has
resulted in cost savings and fewer jail days and less prison time," she
said. She said the threat of doing prison time is often what motivates
drug users to clean up their acts.

But Zimmerman contends that Ohio isn't doing enough.

"I think that there's a difference between making progress and a program
actually working," he said. "If Ohio is still sending 3,000 people a
year to prison for nonviolent drug use, then it's not working."

Reginald Wilkinson, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation
and Correction, disagreed.

He said most of those low-level drug offenders who wind up in prison are
there because they've become a nuisance to the court, usually by
continually violating the conditions of their parole.

"I am relatively confident that we would have a lot more than 3,000
people coming in here if we weren't doing what we're doing," Wilkinson
said.

For the proposal to go on the ballot, supporters must collect around
335,000 signatures on petitions, which represents 10 percent of the
votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.