Let them die? A controversial proposal about heroin

This weekly column is a lookaround Butler and Warren counties from Enquirer Reporter Keith BieryGolick. Send tips, comments and questions to kbierygolick@enquirer.com.

'Life has not been good'

Let them die. 

That was the jarring message from Middletown City Councilman Dan Picard. 

A day before Middletown's council meeting on June 20, City Manager Doug Adkins attended a local heroin summit. He told people there the city was on pace to spend $100,000 on Narcan, a medicine that can block the effects of opioids and is often used by first responders to reverse an overdose.

Adkins said the city had already responded to 100 more overdose runs by June than it did in all of 2016. In addition, he said there had been 51 overdose deaths in the city as of June 17.

Last year, there were 74, he said. 

More:Overdoses continue to rise in Butler County

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Picard read these harrowing statistics in a newspaper article the day of council's meeting. Then, Adkins presented more of the same that night.

Picard, swinging his hands in the air, eventually asked the city manager:

"Is there a law that says we have to go out?" 

He was talking about responding to overdoses.

The question sat there for three seconds without a reply. It was a stunning question, underscoring the depth of the heroin epidemic and mounting frustration as it continues to get worse.

After sitting silently, Adkins moved his head back and cleared his throat.

"If we want to get out of the business, we have the right to get out of the business," he said, suggesting the city could, for example, privatize emergency medical services.

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Picard asked about the possibility of not responding to addicts who repeatedly overdose.

"We need to make a decision," he said in the meeting. "Because frankly, I'm to the point of we need to make a decision that perhaps we don't."

"I want to send a message to the world."

Adkins told The Enquirer he has asked the city's law department to analyze whether it is legal to refuse to dispatch for an overdose.

But before the next question, the city manager interrupted.

"This isn't going to go anywhere," he said, sounding exasperated at the national attention this has received. "Even if it was, I'm not sure I would want to face the lawsuits that could come from it."

Picard, whose council term expires at the end of the year, is not seeking re-election. He's served on council for almost eight years.

"During the last four or five days, life has not been good," he said, discussing the overwhelmingly negative response to his comments.

Look at his Facebook page. Under a photo announcing his recent marriage is a string of comments lambasting him.

"Daniel You are a disgrace to humanity!" said one. 

"Have fun in hell a*****!" read another.

"It costs $0.00 to be a decent human being," one post said.

On Tuesday, Picard sounded like a man who didn't realize the implication of his words. He stood by his comments in an interview with The Enquirer, but also reshaped them.

"My goal was not to stop treating overdoses, it was to solve a financial problem – not to stop the drug problem," Picard said. "If we dispatch, then we have to treat. I have no problem with that."

Carlisle bans marijuana farms - then sells to one

Randy Winkler’s ringtone is “You Are My Sunshine.” 

The mayor of Carlisle says this is so if someone calls him upset, it gives them time to cheer up. 

“Sometimes it works,” Winkler says on a lunch break this week. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”

His ringtone was put to the test recently when the Warren County village sold 10 acres of land to Ohio Craft Cultivators, a group that plans to build a marijuana growing facility there.

The move is interesting because the village put a temporary ban on medical marijuana facilities in February. It rescinded part of it last week.

For Carlisle, a village of about 5,000 people, the deal was too tempting:

Ohio Craft Cultivators is buying 10 acres of land in the village's business park for $450,000. 

Winkler says this will pay off the village's debt on the park ($300,000) and save $32,000 in interest by paying it off six years early. The company is expected to create 20 to 25 jobs.