A recovery home crackdown for Portsmouth
Gov. Mike DeWine on Monday, flanked by Scioto County lawmakers, announced an effort to propose new rules and certification requirements for recovery homes for those emerging from drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
He called the rules a reflection of massive growth in the industry – in 2022, there were 356 recovery houses in operation, and today there are more than 1,700.
The rule mimics legislation passed by the House that has not yet been taken up by the Ohio Senate. The administrative rule can only last 180 days without legislative approval.
As Signal Statewide has previously reported, there has been a get-rich-quick ethos around some operations, which has left vulnerable patients in unsafe and poor living conditions, sometimes including mice and cockroaches. (“It’d be easier for you to become a clinical provider and make money than it would be for you to open a Chipotle,” one provider told us last year.)
And the dynamic has stirred up relations between the locals, the providers, and the people trying to get clean.
Between 2006 and 2019, pharmaceutical distributors and pill mill operators sold more than 64 million powerfully addictive painkillers in Scioto County, seeding the modern opioid crisis. Now, a new and predatory subset of the much-needed recovery industry is preying on the same people, as Rep. Justin Pizzuli, of Portsmouth, put it. The cheap land and cash-strapped, understaffed local governments lure them there.
“They know they can prey on impoverished areas,” he said. “We were ground zero on the opioid epidemic, so of course, we’re crying on this issue first.”
Andrew Tobias put a spotlight on this issue last summer – his article stands up well now that the state has seemingly taken more serious notice.
How Ohio let addictive kratom drinks fly off store shelves unfettered
Another drug policy story: Lawmakers since 2019 have tried and failed to pass even modest regulations on kratom, an opioid-like and largely unregulated drug sold at convenience stores statewide. Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration last year broke the logjam and implemented a crackdown via emergency rule, which is being tested and has held up so far in Franklin County courts.
But how much of this stuff are people actually buying?
We found one clue in the court docket – Botanic Tonics, makers of Feel Free kratom drink, say they’ve been selling 59,000 bottles per day ($10 each) in Ohio. That works out to roughly 21.5 million bottles a year – a pace the company says has at times outsold 5-Hour Energy.
Behind the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the kratom industry in Ohio is a long tail of addiction. We interviewed doctors and nurses treating patients looking to detox from a kratom addiction, plus a Xenia man who described how his habit cost him $10,000 in one year, his job and his marriage.
Ohio regulators have imposed a partial crackdown – banning sales of processed kratom products, including the hyperpotent 7-OH derivative and kratom-based products like Feel Free. But their ban ignores the kratom plant itself, to the chagrin of some officials we talked to.
You can read Jake Zuckerman’s investigation into all of it here.
Max Miller is staying put
A Monday deadline for U.S. Rep. Max Miller, a Bay Village Republican, to step down from his re-election campaign bid came and went, cementing his ballot slot as he disputes three allegations of domestic violence from his ex-wife and others.
The rash of damning headlines and aggressive denials from Miller has left Democrats believing they have a chance in what was expected to be a safe Republican seat.
A respected election prognosticator, the Cook Political Report, shifted the seat from “likely Republican” to “tossup.” And Roll Call reports that the U.S. House Democrats’ campaign arm has added Brian Poindexter, a Brook Park union ironworker running for the seat, to its Red to Blue list.
There are 81 days to Election Day
In the news
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Amy Acton backs Issue 3, the voter ID amendment, breaking with Ohio Democrats. Andrew Tobias reports the Democratic governor candidate says she’ll support the voter ID amendment, putting her on the same page as her Republican opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy.
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Siders family quietly dodged public scrutiny as family grew to 16 children. Sheridan Hendrix and Laura Bischoff of The Columbus Dispatch offer a close look at how the state failed to prevent a child welfare disaster.
An Ohio Congressman violated the STOCK Act with 22 late disclosures. Rep. Michael Rulli failed to properly reveal trades in Palantir, Pfizer and several tech giants, by NOTUS’ Dave Levinthal