Ohio Attorney General Visited Zanesville Tuesday

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine visited the noon Rotary Club of Zanesville Tuesday.

He addressed members on several topics, but one message that he focused on was the heroin problem here and across the state. DeWine spoke about how the most beneficial efforts are local efforts to get rid of the drug.

"One of the things I will talk about today is how important it is for each local community to come up with their own grassroots effort, so that they can really fight back," DeWine said. "Prevention is just key to this."

He said that there are three main factors involved in dealing with the problem. He said that law enforcement is key in getting the drug off the streets, but that it’s not the only thing that is being done to end the drug problem.

"We don’t have enough treatment in the state," DeWine said. "It’s not available as easily as it should be. Those are both very very important. The third, this is the education and the education is just very important. It used to be that heroin, even people that took drugs wouldn’t take heroin. They would say I’m not crazy, I’m not going to do that. There used to be a psychological barrier that existed. Today that barrier is down."

He added that grassroots movements are one of the most valuable ways to get the problem under control.

The Democratic Candidate for Attorney General was reached via email for a statement on the heroin problem sweeping the state. 

"We’re years into this crisis, and Ohio still has no statewide plan to deal with the heroin epidemic," Pepper said. "The time for speeches and pep talks is over. We need to be expanding access to treatment, increasing prevention programs in our schools, and holding dealers and traffickers responsible for the deaths they cause."