CONSTITUTIONAL CLUTTER

Treating nonviolent drug offenders rather than sending them to jail may be
a worthy societal goal, but it doesn't belong in Ohio's already cluttered
constitution.

No matter how well-intentioned, a proposal by a California organization
that has had success in luring voters in several states into approving
drug-treatment mandates would do further violence to a state constitution
already over-burdened with matters that should be handled by statute rather
than constitutional amendment.

As it is, the state constitution has ballooned into an ugly, cumbersome
document, descended from the broad, simple statement of legal principles
originally drafted in 1802, the year before Ohio joined the union. Over the
years, the constitution has been larded up with such a conglomeration of
legislative matters - the intricacies of funding coal research, for
example, and the payment of Korean War veterans bonuses - that it has
become largely indecipherable to the average person.

Ohioans also should be concerned about the tactics and motives of the
multimillionaires who have announced that they will petition to put the
drug-treatment issue before voters next November.

One of them, Peter B. Lewis, a Cleveland insurance magnate, was busted for
marijuana smuggling in New Zealand in January, 2000, and spent much of the
following year using that nation's secretive disclosure law in a failed
attempt to keep his arrest a secret.

Mr. Lewis, along with John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix,
and financier George Soros, of New York City, are part of what Washington
Post reporter David Broder calls "the initiative industry," which has a
record of exploiting public distrust by bypassing state legislatures with
attractive but sometimes deceptive ballot proposals.

In his 2000 book, Democracy Derailed, Mr. Broder says the initiative
process, "ostensibly driven by public opinion, is, in reality, manipulated
by moneyed interests, often funded by out-of-state millionaires pursing
their own agendas on a new frontier of American politics operating
virtually without public scrutiny."

Mr. Lewis, Mr. Sperling, and Mr. Soros have successfully financed ballot
issues in a number of states, seeking to legalize "medical marijuana" and
to decriminalize drug possession and use for nonviolent offenders under the
theory that treatment is better than jail as a way to deal with this
serious societal problem. The American people, they say, have grown
skeptical that tough punishment dictated by the "war on drugs" isn't working.

That is at least a debatable issue that ought to be dealt with by the
elected members of the Ohio General Assembly rather than legislated at the
polls after a barrage by paid petition circulators and slick television
commercials. Furthermore, Ohio judges already have, and many use, the
discretion to order drug treatment and to hold the threat of jail over the
head of offenders who fail to get clean. The ballot proposal would wipe out
this discretion, just as it would mandate the appropriation of $38 million
in taxpayer funds by the legislature for drug treatment over the next eight
years.

As much as the legislative process can seem laggardly and unresponsive at
times, writing this complex issue into the Ohio Constitution is not a
thoughtful solution to a complex problem. Too much harm already has been
done by special interests seeking to end-run the legislature.