Public Safety & Criminal Justice Reform Committee - Regular Meeting

I wanna call to order the Toledo City Council Public Safety Criminal Justice Reform Committee. Clerk, please call the roll.

Hobbs. Here. Williams. Here. Hartman. Here. McPherson. Morris. Sorantu, three present.

Thank you. I want to we're gonna start tonight with our quarterly reports. We have reporting first municipal court and judges and municipal court clerk. Thank you all for being here.

Thank you, chairman Hobbs, and thank you members of this council. My name is Brian Lotta. I'm a deputy court administrator at the Toledo Municipal Court. I will I'm very appreciative of the opportunity to be in front of you this evening for this quarterly report. I recognize that your time is valuable.

So please do not take my brevity as a sign of disrespect because I just want to make sure I get our information out there so you guys continue with your meeting. So today, I'm going to give an update on the status of the newest Department of the Toledo Municipal Court, that is the Help Center. This Help Center was created by basically repurposing previous positions to create a new help center that's going to help self represented litigants in a budget neutral fashion. When we look at there's two types of cases at the courthouse, there are criminal cases and civil cases. For criminal cases, there is a constitutional right to counsel, so we have a very good system where people can have access to an attorney for criminal cases.

That same access is not afforded for civil cases. In fact, in 2024, 90% of all the civil events that happened at Toledo Municipal Court pertained a unrepresented litigant. So our way of filling this gap is we are establishing a help center that will provide two lanes of service, one of professional assistance where they can either meet with a mediator. We have attorneys from legal aid that are also going to be a part of this as well as our licensed intervention specialists to kind of help with those matters as well as we're going to have a lot of self help to give people the tools they need to handle the cases they have before our courthouse. So there are going be four different types of cases that we're mainly going to be focusing on.

Those are going be housing cases, debt collection, license reinstatements as well as ceiling and record ceiling and expungement. Housing, debt collection, license reinstatements, so people who have issues with having their license suspended, making sure they get back on track to get valid and be a license driver, as well as record ceilings and expungements. Those will be the four primary subject areas. But one of the other things about this help center is it will be a good hub in the courthouse for people who are not sure what they're doing, where they need to go, they should be able to go to the help center and get pointed in the right direction from there. So we have hired our newest commissioner, her name is Kate Lins.

We already have our mediator, already have our license intervention specialist and we have repurposed employees. They are part time employees and their job will be kind of be like the way finders, their positions are called court navigators. And what I'm really proud of is that we were able to create this department without doing any additional new positions or anything along those lines, kind of repurposing the tools and the products we already had available in the courthouse. That being said, I want to be mindful of your time. We'll take any questions you have about the help center.

Thank you, Mr. Lotta.

So the help center is just gonna specifically focus on

this. Well, my question first of all, I want to say forgive me. I want to say that I'm thankful for a council member council member Sam Melden being here tonight as well. Thank you for being here. So what then causes a person to go to the help center? Do you direct them there or do they do this on their own?

We're gonna have it be both. So this will be a help center that's gonna be located on the 4th Floor of our building. They could be referred to from a different department in the court. Maybe they were in probation, maybe they were in our scheduling office and they had a question, they can be directed up to the help center, they could be coming directly from a courtroom. But it also would be just open to the public where if someone had a question, they're not sure what they need to do for the work in this building, they could walk right up to the building and be seen by our court navigators, also the student employees I referred to earlier.

Thank you. Any questions? Alright. Thank you, mister Lotta. And now we will hear from municipal court clerk. Thank you for being here today.

Good afternoon, chairman Hobbs and members of the committee. My name is Alex Tugolet. I'm the executive chief deputy clerk in the clerk's office. I'm here today with more of a mid year update for you guys. I have numbers basically seven months into the year and if we look at seven months into this year versus last year, our small claims filings are up 32% over mid year twenty twenty four.

The civil division overall has increased 9% in total over this point last year. So these are our largest case files and by largest case files I mean they're the ones that physically have the most paper in them. And so I think I talked to you at our last meeting, our focus has destruction of these records because as we get more and more of these case files that have a lot of paper we need somewhere to put them. So we focused our mid year budget adjustment on shifting salary and other savings into contractual services because we're going to be contracting with a document destruction company to scan and destroy over 500 boxes of these files so that we have room for next year. So you're going to be seeing an ordinance that I'll submitting shortly you're after that mid year budget adjustment is approved so that we can get that work done this year so that we're ready for next year.

And that's my update for this quarter.

Thank you. Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you, chair Hobbs. Quick question. Thank you so much for your presentation and you too, Brian. A quick question about the collections. I know that the ability to put warrant blocks on is no longer, how is collections going so far?

So okay, so we can put warrant blocks on those are for for warrants, right? We cannot put a vehicle registration block.

Okay.

I met with our credit card and this is only credit cards, so I it's not everything, but I did just meet with our credit card company last month and we're in credit card collections and criminal traffic, we're only down 1%. Oh, good. Now, overall, our filings in criminal traffic are down. So that also, in addition to vehicle registration blocks, that affects our numbers as well. But overall, at this point, we're not seeing that much of a decrease. Decrease.

Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, chair.

Thank you, vice chair Williams. No other questions. Miss Hugler, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Can we now have a report from our law and also have fire and rescue come to the table as well?

Thank you for inviting me to join you this afternoon. I am Rebecca Facey, Chief Prosecutor for the City Of Toledo handling all of your traffic and misdemeanor offenses at the Toledo Municipal Court. In terms of a quarterly update, in the past three months our office has handled approximately 8,000 cases and that breaks down to just under 1,000 cases per prosecutor handling about 300 cases each per month. So if you are ever curious, if we are busy at Toledo Municipal Court, do not worry, we keep ourselves very, very busy. In terms of breakdown in what those cases are and what we're handling, we have maintained our focus and priority on domestic violence offenses.

It remains one of our top charged criminal offenses. We handled six zero two such offenses in the past quarter followed only by assaults, five sixty three. Additional priority and major safety concern to the community is our operating a vehicle while intoxicated offenses handled just under 400 of those in the past quarter as well. The only thing that is charged more than domestic violence assault, or excuse me, not charged more than domestic violence and assault, but the next highest criminal offense in our court is disorderly conduct, kind of a low level, nonviolent, catch all misdemeanor. With that, I know the committee is aware of the safety and justice diversion program that our court has been involved in that Harvard is currently studying.

Wanted to give you an update that while the goal is to have 1,200 participants in that study, we currently have 192 enrolled. Harvard is telling us that we are above pace for that study participants, So certainly encouraged by those numbers and the folks who are going through it and hopefully giving us the results that we are looking for once it is all studied. Finally, in terms of numbers during that quarter, and it's such a bulk of what we do are traffic offenses, moving violations, in which case we handled 4,394 in the last quarter. So something that touches us all in Toledo. I know some of you have been involved yourselves as other drivers or folks who are affected by other people's bad driving.

So again, something that keeps us very, very busy, but always happy to do it. We have a wonderful staff. I am so thrilled to be at full staff at the Toledo prosecutor's office with a wonderful hardworking team every day. Thank you.

Vice Chair Williams.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Facy. Thank you for being here. I have a question about your DV cases. Out of the six zero two that you just said in the first quarter, right? The first quarter, right? Second quarter. Second quarter, many of those were bonded over to common pleas?

So those are just our Okay, misdemeanor just yours, okay.

Correct. All right, all right. Wow, okay, thank you so much. So you still only have one domestic violence prosecutor, we have two?

We actually have three. Oh, sorry. We have three. Yes. We are thrilled for that. Yes. They're doing a fantastic job from arraignment through post conviction probation violation hearings. Yeah. Very hardworking unit.

Okay. And they're working with the officers of TPD, and and that is working out great. Right? Alright. Well, thank you so much. You.

Thank you. Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, chair. Just curious with the number of six zero two, is that a higher is that a high number for per quarter for this quarter? Is there any is it higher around Christmas time? And so in the different quarters, can you kinda talk about the numbers?

Thank you. It is, pretty much on track. Typically, handle about 2,000 domestic violence misdemeanor cases every year, so that puts us on pace for that. Sadly, I was on a call last week with some national folks doing data around criminal justice. And while crime is down around the country, nationally, every single crime is down except for domestic violence, which is up 3%. And we are certainly seeing that and feeling that in Toledo, Ohio.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, councilwoman Morris. I am, thankful for our council president being able to attend today. I want to say that I'm glad to hear that we have been able to add more help in this area. We have had, in the last month, several police officers killed across the country. And every time you hear that, there were two just killed just the other day, four shot altogether.

Mhmm. And it seems to be this common denominator or they were on a domestic violence call. And upon arrival or out of nowhere, the offender started shooting. And so there, I am glad to hear that this is taking place to help those that are, you know, suffering from this spike in our country amongst in in that area. And thank you for seeing to the miss miss Facy.

I really appreciate this whatever whoever's behind pushing this because for so long it was one person trying to handle this whole case load. And oftentimes, it takes so much for people to come forward and when they do and they don't feel like they're getting help or being responded to, they oftentimes then drop it or they walk back into the same situation they were in, which makes it even worse. So thank you. I appreciate you.

Thank you. And thank you for counsel support.

Yes. At this time, we're going to have fire and rescue operations.

Good afternoon. Chairman Hobbs, Vice Chair Williams, members of the committee. Allison Armstrong, chief of fire and rescue. With me today is assistant chief John Kaminski. I want to give a brief update from Fire and Rescue.

Current uniform staffing stands at five ninety one and year to date we've had 21 separations with five more expected through the end of the year. That number of five ninety one includes 20 fire recruits that began the academy about two weeks ago and their graduation date will be twotwenty seventwenty six. Although it's worth mentioning that half of that class, so 10 to 11 people are already certified as EMTs or paramedics and they will be released from the academy the December and go to their station assignments. So that will help. Okay, response data, it's in line with what we saw last year during the same time period.

Total incidents are 37,497 and most of them are for EMS calls for service. As you can see, one thousand four and ninety five and then fire incidents were just over 6,000. And under fire incidents that includes more vehicle accident responses, which many times are EMS incidents. And then total responses are 65,670 and that number is higher because that is reflective of multiple rigs responding to the same call for service. Busiest apparatus by type, just a brief overview, we have 13 medic units and Medic three is housed downtown on Bush Street and they were the busiest with 2,375 responses.

And then Engine twenty three out on Lasky in West Toledo was the next our busiest engine at 2,925 responses. And then for heavy rescues, we only have two in the city. So Rescue seven had 2,719 responses. And then for our ladder trucks, they're the last out apparatus. We try to hold them in reserve for structured fires and Tower Ladder seventeen had over 700 responses.

For our ambulance transports, as you all know, we took on the ALS component of transporting from Lucas County. So we had just over 14,000 transports and that number is doubled from what we saw last year during that time period when we were just transporting BLS only. For our Fire Prevention Bureau, we've had nineteen thirty eight fire inspections and that team has also reviewed three sixty three fire sprinkler plans and then 32 building free plans and mitigated 36 code red properties. Also, I'd like to throw under here that our public education Bureau has attended over 116 events, they believe serving over 60,000 people in their estimate. And then, we've given away over 1,600 smoke alarms yet this year.

2025 highlights, we continue to work on station improvement projects such as the roofs, windows, HVAC systems, kitchens, concrete and a lot of other smaller projects to improve our stations and stop leaks. We're always looking for various funding sources such as new grants or new other opportunities for funding that we might be able to utilize to complete our mission. For fire vehicle replacement, we received two heavy rescues and one air unit this year. We have four engines on order, but their estimated delivery date will be in the first quarter of next year. And then we just ordered three ambulances and their delivery date will not be till the 2027, which highlights a larger issue here that we need to order apparatus and they're taking longer to build and deliver.

And then next year, my understanding is there's going be an emissions standard change which will then increase the price of these vehicles. We're also working on the implementation of a twenty four hour EMS supervisor. This is a position that we had up until I think around 2000 when it was eliminated. Obviously, there's a huge need to bring it back. And so that should be implemented by October.

We also created and launched a new employee webpage to help facilitate information delivery, communication within our department. That's been a huge success. And, our awards ceremony will be on nineeleven so imitations for that will be forthcoming. That is the end of our presentation and with that I'll take any questions.

Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you. Thank you so much chief. The question that I'm having is the one that was, actually publicized in the blade. I wanna definitely talk about our fire houses and how this council has paid a whole lot attention to this. It has been brought to my attention that a lot of the fire houses, the contractors were falling behind on some of the work and it was causing some problems with the our firefighters and how they do their work.

Can you speak to because I know we've talked about it. I talked to deputy chief Kaminski about it. Can we speak to how things are going with the renovations of the firehouses? Because it took us a long time to even get the money to get the firehouses done and then to know that we had some contractors kinda needed their butts kicked to get into gear. Can we talk to how things are going with the renovations of the firehouses?

Yeah, happy to answer that. So in general, we have had more than our fair share of challenges when it comes to getting these projects started on time, completed on time. There's been weather delays. There's been some we had some rainstorms that came maybe when they tore a roof off and then temporarily covered torrential rain that wasn't anticipated for or like I said, the roof wasn't covered necessarily properly so we had leaks in a couple stations related to that. We contacted the contractors.

They did come out and address any damage and fix the problem and ultimately complete the projects. We've used several different contractors for these roofs. And my general opinion is that none of them are simple or easy roofs. Many of the stations have multiple roof heights and roof types. Most of them are flat roofs. So we have mitigated things as quickly and efficiently as possible withholding these contractors to task, but it has been frustrating. And I share that frustration with our personnel. I know they've been frustrated about the projects. But the simple fact is our buildings are old. Their average age I think is pushing 50 years.

We have a couple that are 100 years old. And so through the city administration and council support, we have been able to do a lot of things but there is a lot more work to be done.

And I just want to make it clear that this council has been very active in helping the firehouses because they're especially, I mean, at large and districts but the districts we, I think councilman Hobbs actually spent the night at a few of them. So this council has been very supportive and been proactive and been involved in working with you guys to try to understand what's going on because we need our firefighters to be in a health and safety and safe environment to help be first responders. So I wanna make that clear to the public because it was put out there, that you know some of the contractors were falling behind. We know we have been working with you guys to try to assist in what what we do and administration has been doing its due diligence to get these contractors going but there are things that do happen unfortunately but I want to make it clear that this council has been doing the work. Work.

Another question that I have, by way of referral, and I'll make sure we get this, can this committee get how many ODs we've responded to in this last in this year, twenty twenty five? I'm sorry.

What was the question again? How many

How many overdoses has this has has you guys with the county responded to overdoses? I don't care what what they OD'd on. How many times have our firefighters responded to overdoses in 2025?

Yes, ma'am. We'll link that to you by way of referral.

Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, chair. The Fire Prevention Bureau is very near and dear to my heart. I'm curious, the number of fire inspections, what you said were nineteen thirty eight, is that up or down? Can you tell me?

I don't have that number off the top of my head. I believe it was slightly up from the same time period of last year, but I can send you that

exact information by way of I'll write this all out so you don't even have to write it down. So don't even worry about it. And then I was curious to see, are all of our fire inspectors full? Are those positions full?

Not at this time. We had, several positions open up unexpectedly. So we have hired two fire inspectors recently and that exhausts our list. So we'll have to put that back out for hiring.

So how many vacancies do you have?

We have two vacancies right now. Okay.

Not counting the two that you've hired?

Correct. Because we had one person in plan review retire so one inspector moved into that position.

Okay. And then, I'm also gonna put, in in the referral, I'm curious as to the cost of the inspection and when those fees had been reviewed because I'm gonna guess that's probably been a a while. And then lastly, far as the smoke alarms, are people still able to go to the stations to secure those?

Yes. We do carry them at the stations. We are we did order some recently because our inventory was running slightly low. But every station should have them for distribution.

And then thank you. And then there was a program, if I'm not mistaken, through the Red Cross that they would help, install them. Is that still an active program?

Yes. The Red Cross still assists with that.

Okay. So we can't use the excuse that I couldn't reach it, I couldn't put it up. No. It's gonna be an active smoke detector. Every floor needs a smoke detector. And we need you know, especially when when I see in my district if there's been a fire, let's say in a mobile home or what have you, I really hope that the department would go out in that neighborhood neighborhood and go out and talk to the residents and remind them, you know, here is a structure that just caught on fire, you know, are you are you up to date? Can we help you get up to date? Do you do you do We

do that. Yes, ma'am.

We do. Okay.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. I will write that out so you don't even have to do that. And thank you very much both of you for your presentation. Thank you. Thank you, chair.

You. Ms. Facing, one question real quick. Then the 8,000 that number, where does that number stand? Is that you talked about in the beginning 8,000 for this up to this point.

For this quarter?

Yes. Over

under average?

It is pretty average.

Okay.

Yep, our office is handling just over 30,000 cases per year for the last several years.

Okay, all right, thank you. Alright. I believe that is it. And thank you. And now can we have police operations?

Thank you.

Thank you all so much. Chief, I noticed you and chief Braun both have briefcases. I need one.

Looking for it. Lunch. Alright. Well, good afternoon, chair. Thank for you having us, members of council. We appreciate the opportunity to, present our updates for this quarter. First thing we're gonna do is, kinda just talk about our crime update. And I know we did a half year update press conference earlier. So what I'm gonna do is kind of bring you up to speed of where we are as of today. As we look at all of our crime types, we that we track, we are down in every category except for homicide.

We are up one homicide for the year, so that is a 4% increase. However, our shootings are down 19% and our persons shot are down 21%. Other notes are robberies are down 27% for the year and our burglaries are down 6% and our auto thefts are down 4% for the year. Next thing I just wanted to talk to you briefly about is our staffing numbers. We are currently sitting at six twenty sworn officers.

This does include 33 cadets inside the academy that are set to graduate in November. We are down 39 so far this year in retirements or departures, and we are expecting at least another seven that have confirmed for the year. However, we always do have a few more that depart for the year. Along with our numbers, I just wanted to talk about our recruiting. We just finished our recruiting cycle and I'd just kind of like to give you an update on where we compare to where we were last year.

If you remember last year we actually saw some very good results kind of record highs in the recent years and I'm pleased to announce that in every category we surpassed last year although it was very close. This year we had six thirty eight applicants compared to six zero three last year that resulted in three forty six taking the test compared to three thirty eight last year and we ended up with passing of three zero nine compared to three zero five from last year. So we are now in next phase of the recruiting cycle, which involves our pre PT test to get into our backgrounds. Once we finish those PT tests this month, we'll begin our background process. As of right now, obviously we're still in the budget cycle and still finalizing budgets, but we are preparing for a class at the March next year.

And one of the other things I just kind of wanted to update you guys on, I know we talked about it a lot earlier this year. Unfortunately, we ran into a few roadblocks and that is our drones as a first responder program. If you remember correctly, we had a trial initiative that was given to us that for a year we were able to test out the program to see if it does in fact return the viable results we believe it will and helping us respond to calls for service and clear calls as well as you know that situational awareness and officer safety for our officers. It does look like we are going to be launching that the week of the September 15 as long as everything kind of proceeds as planned right now. So we kind of overcame those hurdles and are moving forward with it.

And with that, it'll start that first on that Monday the fifteenth with some of the training and then hopefully by that Friday, will be launched and going live with it. And that is really the updates we have for you for right now. So I will entertain any questions that you might have.

Thank you, Chief. Vice Chair Williams.

Thank you. I want to talk about the discussion we had about our substations and thank you for coming to the committee hearing then and today. How is the move going? What are where are we at right now? I know it's only been a few weeks, but I'm just trying to figure out, like, where we are.

I know the community outcry for, the Northwest District was really big. I know that's my colleague's district. Our dish my district is receiving a handful of police to be stationed on Cherry Street. So I'm just trying to figure out where we at with it and what you can talk about with the substation conversation. I know we are scheduled to have a meeting about that soon with safety director Kral, but just wanted to see where we are with you guys since we have you in front of us.

Sure, absolutely. So right now we are still as far as the move goes status quo. We're looking for hopefully early September to start moving into the new building over off of Cherry Street, which then will allow us to start moving those officers out of the Northwest District Station. But Northwest District Station will still keep officers in there for a little bit of time because it's kind of a domino effect. Once we move out of the Ottawa Park Station then we have to get that ready for some of those officers to move there.

So I anticipate that there'll be officers through inside Northwest at least through September and probably a little bit into October towards the end of this year before that move is finalized. As far as other options for the area, we've had some good conversations and we're exploring some neighborhood station style, neighborhood office to replace that Sylvania Avenue corridor. We are still in talks, we have a meeting coming up with the mall as far as having some space for our recruiting efforts that we talked a little bit about. So unfortunately we do not have a replacement building yet, but I would say we've had some really good conversations about moving to a different model or a new model to help us still have a presence out there and then maybe if this I think we're looking at it as a pilot program, if that actually does come to fruition and is something that is beneficial to the department and the neighborhoods, then that's something that we'll think about maybe expanding to the other districts across the city.

Another question I have for you is the community service officers and the cars. I I know every time I'm at a community meeting, think it's about two or three cars that stay on. How can we get them some cars that they can turn off while they go in the building?

So are you asking how do we get the officers to turn off their car?

No. Because they can't turn them off. They're that raggedy. Yes. They are. Don't yeah. They are raggedy. We know they can't turn them off. We all have attended community meetings where the community service officer has to keep the car running.

So I will tell you that we do have kind of a domino effect on our cars and a lot of times the non field operations units kind of get the hand me downs if you will. And unfortunately over the last several years, especially post 2020 there, we were not able to get cars. And so we went through several years without buying any cars. We have purchased some for this year that we're still trying to get out on the streets and that will allow us to trickle down more cars to replace those. But cars for us are still an issue and at the time it was we had the money for the cars, but we just couldn't buy the cars.

Okay, I remember we were there were a delay in that. So okay, hopefully we can I think this council probably needs to figure something out to help Chief get them people some cars and where's the ice cream truck Chief?

I'm sorry, what was

the The ice cream truck.

Yes, the ice cream truck is up and running.

Where is it?

Right now it's in the barn.

Okay, okay. I just was checking. I just was checking I know that we were wanting to get that out and counsel wanted to help with that in any way we could. I just wanted to follow-up with that.

We appreciate that.

Thank you, chair.

Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, chair.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm wrong. I'm sorry. I got contacts so I'm still blind. Councilman Melden. I'm sorry. Councilman Melden.

That's my fault.

I'm happy to defer. I'll just make a make a quick comment. Thank you, chair. And, I just wanna underline what the We chief had a lot of good conversations about a potential pilot program. You know, it's I want to just kind of ground that conversation in the action that this council took a few weeks ago when we passed a resolution twelve-zero confirming our support for a station a presence, a neighborhood presence in that West Toledo community.

My goal in figuring out now, what does that presence look like? We all said we want it. What does it look like? My goal is trying to figure out with listening to the neighbors and really talking to people in the neighborhood, to talking with the Chief, talking to Safety Director Kroll, is what can we come up with, which leads to a pilot program probably, what can we come up with that suits the need of the neighborhood, but potentially could scale citywide and work in other neighborhoods throughout the city and the community? That's hard to do, but I think our work is hard and that's the point.

So that's what I'm after and I'm hopeful, I'm optimistic that we're onto a couple of good leads, I guess, of what that might look like. But certainly the will of this council was to maintain a presence there. Now we just have to figure out what it looks like. So I want to thank some members of the Blessed Sacrament community too for just a good meeting first thing Monday morning this week. So those conversations are ongoing and I feel like I'm really kind of in between trying to figure out how do we operationalize what that neighborhood wants. So thank you.

Thank you, councilwoman Melden. Now councilwoman Morris, my apologies. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, chair. I was afraid that councilwoman Williams just wanted some ice cream. That's why I think she wanted to know where the truck was. Well, I'm sure we'll find you something good.

I believe that it was at that meeting that someone really gave a good advice on looking for some type of a neighborhood presence. You know, our our districts, they aren't just islands amongst themselves, they do intersect. And so, it might make sense, I believe it was someone that mentioned, you know, I I know there's like a little triangle that six and five and one and four actually all come together right at Jack, Pennsylvania. So, rather than having six different forward facing places, maybe it does make sense to choose an area where they all intersect and, you know, you can disperse or come to or what have you, have that. So, it's just a piece of advice that a resident gave us.

So, I think that was good advice. And then, you know, since this is my opportunity to talk to you chief, you know, I'm always going to bring up the CSOs and I want to make sure I know there's a retirement. I think it's tonight. Well, maybe I shouldn't say Thursday. Okay.

Never mind. There's a retirement for a CSO individual and so I just wanna make sure sense that I wanna make sure that we are hiring those those individuals. While, yes, those those locations are important, the actual people in my opinion are the forward facing individuals that that people work with in these neighborhoods every day in these different sectors. Right? So they they work within those those sectors and they know that neighborhood. So, I again, I'm gonna ask you chief, how are we doing on replacing those individuals who are either retiring or moving on to a different position?

Yes, so I will reaffirm my commitment to hire those. We actually have bidded out, it's one of our class three bid processes. So we have to do certain things to pick the replacements. So we're in the interview phase right now to try to, figure out who's going to replace those retirements.

Okay. And for the record, I'm very happy with the two CSOs that I have in District 6. So, District, I think it's it's Sector 1 and Sector 2. So just very happy with them. So please don't take them and please augment the other ones that are throughout the city. So thank you very much chief.

Thank you.

Chief, deputy chief, as I stated earlier, there seems to be a lot of officers that are being shot and killed in domestic going on domestic cause. Can you kinda walk me through our approach to a domestic call TPD? I know everything is different, but just on average, how that kind of working?

Yes. And unfortunately there's that situation and then we've had some ambush situations across the country too as well that unfortunately a lot of officers are being killed in. But for the domestic violence specifically, a lot depends on what is called into 911 on how many crews respond. But it's always a two officer response. Officers are well aware of the dangers of domestic violence.

They do know that's one of the most dangerous calls we go on. So they do have that in their training. So they are always trying to approach those scenes cautiously, trying to get as much information from the caller as we can. So it's imperative for our 911 call takers to get information on weapons and the type of violence that's occurring because that just gives our officers that much more information as they approach. Also if there's weapons involved then a lot of times we will send multiple crews not just the two man unit, we'll send additional units as well for back up.

But they're always using the tactics that they're being trained in the academy on how to approach these houses and these scenes. And it becomes incumbent upon the officers to not become complacent. Unfortunately, we do as you heard handle a lot of domestic violence calls. So it is natural sometimes for officers to become a little bit complacent, but hopefully as we continually to do our reoccurring training and as instance like this are occurring across the country, they're well aware of the dangers and are reminded of those dangers that they fall back on the tactics that they're trained in the academy.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Thank you, chief. Thank you deputy chief for being here today.

We're going to now shift this portion of our public safety meeting to talking about kratom and its effect in the city of Toledo. If you have remarks or anything you would like to say there, you will have three minutes. There's a sign up sheet on the back table that you can sign if you want to talk about Kratom. There's a sign up sheet there, and we will then go by that sheet and give you an opportunity to speak to that. I want to thank anyone that's here today as a part of this meeting for Kratom.

We endeavor, myself and vice chair Williams, councilwoman Morris, councilman Melden, president Hartman, we are here because we are concerned about our community and the way anything could affect our community. And so we're here to listen to each other pro and con for or with against and have a conversation. This is what we have come together for today so that we can express some concerns, but also you as a community can express concerns as well. I'm going to now turn this portion of the meeting over to vice chair Williams for comment and then to councilman Melden, and then we will begin to call the city of Toledo law department and then Lucas County health department up. So I'm going to turn it over to council vice chair Williams and then councilman Melden, and then we will go further.

Thank you, chair. I'm excited to hear this discussion and anything else before this council. This is a public meeting where if you do wanna speak, we will allow you to speak. I do encourage everyone that does want to speak to know that we have a timer. Y'all can't just go on and on and ramble.

We wanna hear everybody that's here especially with this being so many people here today. If you would adhere to the three minutes, that would be great. Please understand this is not us saying, hey, we don't wanna hear you, that is why we're here and I'm glad that everyone is here but we do have a timer. It is a three minute timer and we do wanna hear you but we don't need to hear you all night long. So we appreciate the speakers that are gonna come present.

I'm actually very interested in this discussion. It has been different one for me because of so much information that we have been presented, I think us as a council will go and decide accordingly what's best for the citizens of the city of Toledo. And we are definitely glad that everyone was able to come. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Chair, Councilman Melden.

Thank you, Yeah, I just want to echo my colleagues sentiment. I think that our council meetings are somewhat for those of you, maybe if this is your first one or you've been here plenty of times before, our council meetings are actually a little bit tricky when it comes to public comments. Sometimes people show up Tuesday at 4PM and they think that they can just comment. And I actually think that would make sense. That is not actually how it's structured. That's not the rule. And so a committee meeting is in fact the best place for that. And so I just appreciate everyone who's in attendance here. Thank you for being here. This is the point of a meeting like this.

And so I'm excited to hear from everyone here. I just want to mention, I think how this came up for this council in the context of an experience that I had earlier this year when a constituent emailed me talking about a concern for a loved one who had become really addicted to this kratom substance. I will say I had not heard of it before this email. I did not know anything about it. As I talked to other folks in the community and on this council, they all had a very similar reaction, actually.

But the concern in that moment was this was someone talking about a loved one who was in recovery and had then become addicted to something else. And to see how that something else was so readily available at the vape shop on the corner. And to be very specific, that was the concern in the email. My loved one, trying not to give away any information there, but my loved one is able to go to the vape shop and get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars this to keep to staying reliant on the substance. My role and I I am almost positive we all share this feeling.

Our role in this council is to do whatever we can from this seat and from this position to help create the most safe environment for our citizens to to thrive and flourish. So that's really the heart, at least in my opinion, of what we're talking about here. We've received a number of emails and and comments on our registrar system, and and so I'm I'm looking forward to hearing more comment here tonight. So thank you, councilman Hobbs, and I don't wanna take over the meeting, but as another cosponsor of the legislation, councilwoman Morris might have something to add that we didn't, but I'll defer to you, chair. Thank you.

Councilwoman Morris.

It's the first time I never had to put on my light to speak. Thank you all for coming. I know that, like you like council member Melden said, this may be your first meeting, and this may be your first opportunity to interact with different parts of the government. So thank you all for coming. Some of us have been involved, personally with addiction.

Some of us have lost individuals in our family through addiction. So please know that this is coming from an area of concern, and we want to hear from you. So I hope you did sign up on the sheet, and I hope that you do add to this conversation. And if there are others that want to add to this conversation, please have them contact us. It's usually better if you contact us and tell us where you live.

That always helps us in noted knowing where people are contacting us from and making sure that we don't have people from all over the country. And this isn't a national issue. This isn't just something that's Toledo, you know, native. But please understand is that we want to hear from our constituents. So that's why I'm asking that if, when you come up, if you can tell us maybe what street you live on, that would be helpful.

You don't have to give us your address. We're not gonna come visit you or anything along those lines, but it's just helpful. And, again, we urge you to talk to us and tell us about your experience. And if you've had someone that's really struggled with this, we wanna hear that too. So thank you very much, and please, I'm looking forward to lively discussion. Thank you.

Alright. First, I'm going to is there anyone here from the city of Toledo Law Department? Anyone here from the city of Toledo Law Department? Alright. Can I have the Lucas County Health Department? I believe they're here today.

Good afternoon, Chairman Hobbs. Thank you for having us. You. I want to make it quick here. I have Maj with me. She's in charge of our injury prevention program. She's going to talk a little bit and make additional comments. I'm basically here because I'm concerned, like all of you, as a health commissioner, for the half million people we serve here in the city, Toledo and Lucas County. This is pretty serious stuff, that we're seeing with. And I want to differentiate here a little bit between kratom in a natural format and kratom when it's processed.

I just want to start by saying that kratom when it's processed and manufactured is illegal in the state of Ohio. So it's regulated in that form. It's only legal in its leaf form or powder form if you powder the leaves. But that's about it. Once we start processing the product, it will become more potent, it will become more addictive, it will become all the bad stuff that comes with this.

Our concern is we're seeing a pattern here. Since the 90s we started with the prescription pills. Then in the 2000s we saw the heroin. Then in the 2020s we start seeing the fentanyl. And now as we are going down from that wave of fentanyl, we started seeing a new product in the market.

You know manufacturers of kratom. You know that the more potent form of kratom is 7OH. So if you hear me saying 7OH is the chemical that makes up the of opiate effect of Kratom. Is a product, seven Oh products are concentrated. Derivatives often falsely marketed as Kratom.

So for the people living in Toledo and Lucas County, anything that's marketed as Kratom you're gonna be careful with what's in it. Problem is the Kratom, the seven zero eight products are designed to look like everyday treats like gummies, candies, and ice cream. So to that extent we started our food safety inspectors start to see those in a lot of the gas stations and start to see those in shots and different formats. There's no age verification that goes into the sale of those. And this is a very dangerous trend on how we start another epidemic here with another product.

While some seven point zero H products are marketed as natural kratom, they are not the same. This is very important and seven Oh presents severe risks for the health. I talked about the natural leaf. The natural leaf, the kratom seven Oh is significantly concentrated extract. It's about 13 times more potent than its natural occurrence.

It has been linked to addiction, liver damage, seizures, and even overdose related death. And maybe European it first time. I don't think our team reported it yet, but we did have back in December a death related to CRADA. Reported side effects, again vomiting, loss of appetite. It will depress the respiration, hallucination, confusion, agitation, liver toxicity, all kind of stuff that's really connected to that product.

Again, from our standpoint as a health department, we are enforcing, and I did include that in your handout, Ohio revised code 3,715.55. And that's a code that deals with adulterated products that are sold to the public in the form of food or added to the food items. Maj, you want to add what your team is doing with this as well?

Sure. Good evening council members. Thank you so much for having me back. My name is Maj Berryman. I work in public health. I work as the supervisor of injury prevention. So primarily, I oversee our overdose prevention efforts, which I was able to present on a few months ago. And you might remember from that presentation that truly harm reduction is about meeting people where they are. So what we're looking at is how we reduce risk and how we support safer choices. And that's going to mean that we don't judge people for what they use, but we do have responsibility to call out when a substance is being sold in a way that is creating potentially more harm than safety.

And like Karim just expressed, karim is often marked as a safe or natural alternative to opioids. Some people do report that it does help them manage withdrawal symptoms, but unlike the FDA approved treatments for pain or opioid use disorder, kratom is unregulated, inconsistent, and addictive. So products can be contaminated, potency can vary, there's no dosing standards, and this makes it risky, especially when people are trying to use it as a substitute for opioids without medical support. And, again, like Karim stated, in our community, Kratom is sold in gas stations and smoke shops, so it's right next to energy drinks and candy. It makes it easily accessible to youth, normalizes its use, and gives the false impression that it's safe.

From a harm reduction standpoint, this is not reducing harm, but potentially introducing a new and poorly understood drug into the mix at a time when we're already battling an overdose crisis. And the safe the safest path forward is not ignoring it, but taking steps to regulate or restrict it so that we can protect our residents, especially young people from unnecessary risk. So at the same time, we should continue investing in what we already know works. So things like distribution, which naloxone would not work on kratom as an overdose reversal tool. Medication assisted treatment and of course strong recovery support.

I also do wanna add that as someone who works in harm reduction, I do wanna be clear that history has shown us that when we make substances illegal, we don't make them disappear. We just shift the harm. So criminalization does disproportionately impact black, brown, and low income communities leading to more arrests and more barriers to employment, housing, and ultimately worse health outcomes. So if our goal is to save lives and reduce harm, the solution might not be prohibition, but regulation and of course safe supply. So controlling substance, how substances are manufactured, labeled, sold, so people know what they're using and can make safer choices.

It also means making evidence based treatments and recovery supports more accessible, which is what, you know, the work of the Lucas County Substance Use Response Coalition is actively working to do. And so for those reasons and just from that harm reduction standpoint, I just wanna urge you to act on this issue, and I appreciate your time. I also do have some data from the Lucas County Coroner on deaths that have involved, I I believe I'm saying this right when I say metrogynine, which is the metabolite of kratom. I can't speak to if metrogynine is in consistently in toxicology panels. Some some of those, you know, more not as as prominent substances aren't always included in like a a typical toxicology panel.

But the Lucas County coroner's office does report that there were five deaths in 2024 that did include so there was some potential creatinine use in in that. And then for about the last seven or eight years, they're providing some numbers to speak to that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councilman Melton.

Thank you, chair. Just a couple quick comments. One, to to level set, I think, on what is in front of us. I mean, is a this is a hearing, I think, probably create a macro in general. But then there are two particular pieces of legislation, actually, that were not referred to this committee, but went first reading in our last council meeting.

One is to ban the sale. It does not say possession. So I just wanna articulate that quick distinction relative to your last comment of what can happen historically when there is a ban. But the second is a resolution asking the board of control to label it a schedule one to begin to and and it's interesting. I mean, you bring up you citing the ORC, and yet here we are.

And so there is this there there is this interesting, if I can collect my thoughts here. There is this interesting, like, dichotomy where you're citing ORC code, which is great. That was redundant. I'll have a revised code, which is great. Yet the I how I've stumbled into this via email, the numbers that you're citing now, I mean, we do have this problem on our hands still. So my question would be, when you think about public health policy, how safe is too safe?

Well, that's a good question. This is kind of a new product. We don't know much about it yet. I think what we're seeing, data that's been collected, that in its potent form when they start manufacturing and process, it can do all that damage. We don't know in its natural format how much of a damage it will do or how much safe is safe.

I think several states in the union they don't have that restriction on the sale of Gradom and that's where we're getting most of our stock into Toledo and into our markets. To the benefit of our markets here, small markets, gas stations that we talked to and we embargoed those items per ORC, they did not know. Those places or those spaces on their counters where they put their little box with all different colors of kratom shots and stuff, it's all being rented out by the supplier. So I think we have a supply into the system kind of issue that we need to deal with. And on the retail end, like I said, our inspectors are out all the time and we're trying to put a limit to what they can and they cannot do within the ORC.

But how safe is safe, I don't know. A lot of people believe in natural remedies. But this particular one, it's doing harm. Than, you know, there's no safety, you know, parameter we can talk about.

I appreciate that. I think that's one of the questions. There's a lot. I think that's one of the questions before this council. I would just say I find it quite concerning the amount of people who, when we talk about the substance, we say I don't know. We don't know. We don't know what this is labeled, what it actually contains. We don't we there's so many unknowns. And so I just wanted to just wanna highlight that for this conversation, the amount of unknowns that exist. And there's so much more comment we'll get into. So thank you, chair, for that time.

Thank you, councilman Melvin. Councilwoman Williams.

I just have a question to go back. You said, March, you said that, Narcan does not help with

responds to opioids on opioid receptors.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilwoman Williams. Marj, my question to you is are you suggesting don't mean this in a bad way, but are you suggesting that we do something with this such as like I take allergy medicine? So, Claritin can be it's out on the floor. But if I want Claritin D, I have to go to the pharmacist, show my driver's license to actually get Claritin D because there are ingredients in Claritin D that can be mixed and made into other drugs. Is that something you think can be done with this kratom?

Because we're dealing with leaf powder, all these other

If I'm being honest, I'm I'm not entirely sure. I do think there is a big danger in you just having it displayed the way that it is with, you know, no warnings, no dosing instructions, people who have very little information, like you said, they don't know and they just have direct access to it. However, when you when you take away access to things, it pops up in different forms. It pops up in different ways and those ways can be more dangerous. So I don't know if that's the solution. I'm so sorry.

No. No. No. I was just asking because you said it pops up in other ways. Mhmm. What one of the ways you think might be able to help this is, like I said, to be you know, there are certain forms, but other forms you may need to go further to get your hands on it. You know?

Yeah. I think just some regulatory guidelines around what that is, what someone's getting, how how someone might take it, would be beneficial and helpful, especially in a setting where they can just buy it next to an energy drink or candy.

Thank you. Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, chair. You touched on something that really, struck me in saying that, we're not sure if it's included in toxicology panels, and I think that's important. I think that's something we we don't necessarily know the what can happen. And, you know, if you take you know, my grandpa used to say, well, if you take one, two is better. And so you don't know if you take ten of whatever it is, is it powder, whatever, however you ingest this. What are the parameters? How bad does it get for your liver? You know, obviously, nobody wants to vomit. Vomit. No one wants all these other issues.

But secretly, it could be really damaging your liver and other organs. You know, and I'm I'm I'm a firm believer in a lot of anti pharma stuff. I I, you know, take a lot of supplements. I, you know, I'm a Latina. So we think you can cure everything with Vicks Vapor Rub. And and that's not a joke. But I can tell you that that that what you touched on

address that or it's just something that I think we don't know because we don't have the the data. I can follow-up with the toxicology department on if it is in that regular 12 panel. And if if it is, the data that I have, I'd be able to provide you confidently. But if it's not, you know, I can just kind of amend that and then provide you with some some of that data as well and just really outline if it isn't. If it you know, are some things like, you know, a fentanyl analog, some of these newer threats that come into the drug supply like xylazine for instance, that is just very expensive to add those things to the panel routinely.

So what usually happens is if something is found on scene after an overdose and BCI, the Bureau of Crime Investigation is there to collect that and to test it. And if they test that sample and something comes up and if they happen to go back and tell the coroner, then the coroner can go back in and test for that. But that's a very long, you know, strand of things that are only if all that happens. So so that would be, like, the alternative of if it's not in that panel, how they would find that substance in a toxicology report.

Thank you. I'd be curious if you could follow-up. That would be helpful. Thank you.

Thank you all. Thank you for being here today. Do we have anyone here from the Mental Health Recovery Services Board? Anyone here? Alright.

I'm gonna ask, before we move to, miss Heidi Soroka, I'm gonna ask a gentleman to come up, mister Walker Gollman, legislative director, Global Kratom Coalition. You can stand there or you can come to the table if you want to. He's gonna speak a little more to the, I believe, the natural leaf portion of it, and thank you for being here today. Hold on one second. We can't hear you.

Come come in come in the pit, mister Wall. Come on in the pit. Have a seat. Push that button. There you go. Can you hear me?

Got you. Perfect.

Thank you. My name is Walker Gollman, and I'm the legislative director of Kratom Coalition, an alliance of consumers, scientific experts, and industry leaders seeking to enact regulations to ensure consumers have access to safe and regulated natural kratom products. I'd like to start by clarifying that kratom is not a drug. It's not something you take to get high. It doesn't have intoxicating qualities.

In fact universities like Johns Hopkins University have done studies on its intoxicating qualities and its habit forming qualities. So they've determined that you're safe to drive on it. They also have determined that its addiction qualities are mild to moderate, so more in line with something like caffeine. Subsequently, you heard the health department just speak about seven o h, and this is the real concern. So it was mentioned earlier that most of you had never even heard of Kratom until recently, and there's a reason for that.

And that's because for about the fifty years that it's existed in the market here in The United States, it's been sold in its naturally form with little to no incident. There's even a clinical study that FDA did in 2024 that backs up that even in large doses, four to six times larger than what you would find on the market, natural leaf kratom is well tolerated in humans. Seven zero eight on the other hand is a chemical that exists in very trace amounts in the leaf. And in recent years, chemists have figured out how to isolate that, synthesize it, and create a highly potent product that's 13 times stronger than morphine and over a 100 times stronger than normal leaf kratom. These are night and day different.

FDA on July 29 actually came out in tandem with HHS and referred concentrated synthetic seven zero H to DEA to be added to schedule one under the Controlled Substances Act. In that announcement they made very clear that they were not targeting the trace amounts included in leaf kratom. They didn't see concern there. To back up that position they actually even invited to the press conference a leaf kratom advocate from Michigan who spoke about her positive interactions with leaf kratom and her concerns about these synthetic concentrates. I know access is a huge issue here, so one of the things I would recommend rather than a ban would be to institute something like 21 age requirement and then require it to either be sold behind the counter or stored with other 21 products.

I know gas stations are a place where this is typically sold. They sell many products that are age gated and controlled that way and required to be behind the counter. So this is not a new action for them. So to add this substance to that same kind of category where you've got protections, keeping it away from minors is important. Again, traditional creatine though in leaf form has traditionally been used for energy and focus.

It's these seven zero h products that people really gravitate towards to when they're looking for something to handle opioid withdrawal or pain management and they're highly addictive. That's a problem we're seeing is in the reporting, you know, kratom is applied as a blanket term to these products. But leaf kratom and these synthetic products couldn't be more different. And that's why I think it's important rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater here, we take a more practical approach and put some good regulations around kratom while moving to prohibit these synthetic products that are really causing the issue. I could go into this for hours and it's a very nuanced and complicated situation but the main takeaway I want to leave you with is that there is actually a lot of data around the safety of leaf kratom.

And the reason we're having this conversation today isn't because of those products. It's because of these concentrated synthetic products that have started to proliferate across the while masquerading as kratom. However, if you look closely, they're not very good at hiding. They have very on the nose names like Cosmicludes, Perks, Roxies, Oxies, and they're marketing themselves as a drug. On the package, it'll say for chronic pain, opioid withdrawal, and they're very much aware of what they're doing.

The people manufacturing these products are the same people manufacturing these synthetic hemp products that have become so problematic like Delta-eight and Delta-nine. And before that, they were doing synthetic marijuana products like K2 and Spice. Bad actors are always going to look to enter a market and find a way to exploit a product that exists and make it more dangerous and make it more addictive. And I think it's important. There are twenty three million people in this country who consume kratom.

And the vast majority of those people are taking it responsibly and using it for energy and focus. And it's touched on that there are some people who use leaf kratom for things to manage pain. And there are people who do, do that. A lot of veterans have found success in that. They go to the VA, they get given a cocktail of opioids and their lives are ruined and they switch to kratom and they find success and something that allows them to function.

Now I will say, when you look at the scientific data, that's not particularly where that's focused. The focus has been on the safety to consume in its traditional form for energy and focus. Universities like the University of Florida have done studies on it for analgesic qualities, studying its effects on dogs that treat arthritis. And there has been some promising results there. But in terms of how that plays in human subjects, we don't know much about that.

But again, that's not what leaf kratom is being marketed for. You know, there are many natural botanicals and dietary supplements that are taken for medical reasons, but that's not their purpose. Ashwagandha, for example, is taken for anxiety, but it's not a drug and it's not being marketed as one. So there's a clear distinction that needs to be made here between what is the problem and what isn't the problem. And so I leave you with that and that the real concern here is look at the actions of the FDA, the top drug and medical officials in this country who've looked at this and said, you know what, we don't think Kratom is the concern. We don't want to schedule it. But these concentrated synthetic products, those are the problem. Those are an emergency and we need to stop that now. Happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. I want to hear from Councilman Melden first. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for being here. We spoke earlier in the week, so good to see you in person. You said something at the end, think I really agree with this notion that these bad actors infiltrate the market. I do want to unfortunately push back and suggest that I think you're creating a bit of a false dichotomy here. I don't know of a lot of people who are referring to this as gas station heroin, who are talking about walking up to the counter of a gas station and buying a leaf. So I have a question for you on this leaf versus seven zero eight, you're doing this very strong separation, they're so different. Is the ice cream product that the health commissioner mentioned, is that a LEAF?

It's a seven zero eight product. Okay.

The various drinks and shots? So there are Is that a leaf product or is that a seven zero eight product?

It depends. So there do exist products that are leaf cratom that look like, you know, some are in what looks like a five hour energy shot. What those are, there's one, for example, called Feel Free. And what that is, it's pineapple juice with crushed leaf in it, essentially.

Okay. So I just wanna thank you. I would just wanna say, I appreciate the argument you're making. And I think you're arguing the wrong to the wrong audience. And I think going to the group that does not allow people to produce something that looks like a treat for a child that has really bad stuff in it is who you probably should be aiming your advocacy at.

And in my estimation, as long as there is so much confusion and so much ability to get such a dangerous product they're not talking about leaves here. If we were talking about leaves, we might have a different conversation. To the cameras in the room, I'm gonna give you a tip on some b roll. The Beetle Shack vape shop on Secor Road in my district has in the window Kratom and under it the number seven. I have not looked more closely, but I am curious what other products what Kratom products are they selling there?

I just keep bringing this up because I wanna be crystal clear about what we're doing. I am not even necessarily saying I disagree with your point that in its pure leaf form, it's safe and fine like ashwagandha. What I am saying is if we were hearing of people overdosing and really becoming addicted to a derivative of ashwagandha, we might be having a conversation about that too. So I appreciate everything you're saying, but we have to be very specific about what we're talking about and in the context of our community. So that's just a freebie for

the Councilman,

if I may, can I offer a quick comment? So an example I'll give here is, let's take alcohol for example. Objectively dangerous, we have treatment facilities across the country, lots of health risks, high youth usage. So an example I like to point to here is many years back there was an alcohol product that hit the market called four Loco that was particularly dangerous because of the caffeine added to it. And so it was effectively a derivative of alcohol with a little twist to it.

And the response to that wasn't to come back and say, wow, someone's made alcohol more dangerous. We should go and prohibit the sale of all alcohol. We prohibited the sale of the particular alcohol product that was causing the problem and prohibited those four local products from being sold anymore. And so I, you know, I I think to that end, you know, you have to focus down on the real issue rather than take this away from people who use it in their day to day lives, who are using the leaf safely and responsible. And you're punishing them for the actions of these other products that are concentrated synthetic products that have little actual resemblance to kratom other than sometimes saying kratom on the package.

Can I quickly? Yes. Thank you, Chair. I appreciate that. I think that if we were in the context where we knew as much about Kratom and other products as we do about related to alcohol, I think we'd be having a different conversation. So I appreciate the comparison, but I think we're having a different conversation. One second. The conversation we're having is about a bunch of well marketed, well disguised you even said that. I mean, these kind of you said bad actors infiltrating the market with well disguised products. Once those are more regulated, I think we'd be having a different conversation. That's why there's two pieces of legislation in front of this body. I'm just speaking for myself, though. So that's my response. Thank you, chair, for the time.

Councilman no. I'm sorry. Councilwoman president Hartman.

Thank you, chair.

Okay. The leaf form of kratom that you speak of, where in Toledo is that sold?

So predominantly, you would buy it in, as alluded to, a gas station or a smoke shop.

So when you compared it to ashwagandha or other supplements that I'm not sure that they are sold in vape shops or gas stations, they're sold in like grocery stores and markets and vitamin shops. Why isn't Kratom in the leaf form sold in like a vitamin shop or a regular store?

Yes. Happy to speak to that. So Kratom exists federally. It's not prohibited and it's not regulated. And so when you look at some of these bigger box stores, they're more hesitant to carry a product that doesn't have legal clarity at the federal level, quite frankly.

Got it.

But I mean, that's not to say that there aren't large retailers in the gas station space. You have Murphy's, Circle K, lots of big box convenience stores who do sell kratom. Mean, typically, you're seeing the synthetic products, those aren't popping up in your big corporate gas stations. Those are more your mom and pop smaller single store gas stations. And the issue we see there is one start selling it and it's very addictive and sometimes quite pricey and they know they've got a customer hooked. And so these other smaller stores look at it and go, well, if we want to compete, we have to start selling this too.

Interesting. Sounds a little predatory to me, but thank you.

Thank you, council president Hartman. Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you, chair. I'll speak to this in a different type of idea. Being a child of a recovering addict, I always correlate everything to crack cocaine because that was my life and this is please don't take this as crass, but cocaine was actually used in surgeries and medical field to help. Is it not? It was. Right?

Yes. Heroin Or the cocoa leaf, not cocaine itself.

Well, heroin was used to help years decades ago as well. Somebody always comes and messes stuff up that is supposed to help. They added, baking soda and or acetone to cocaine and turned it into crack, and then they added, fentanyl to heroin and people were ODing left and right. With several opiate drugs, which is mind blowing to me, Narcan has helped bring people back to life where we don't have anything to help people who owe Dionne Cradem. So what the pro community is asking of this council to not ban the sale of kratom in whatever form is not resonating with me because I am a child of an addict, and I know and I also am a sister of a recovering addict.

I most of my family was, and I had to fight so hard to be sitting here to listen to this, to to to understand what drugs and addiction do to families and I I I understand that it is helping now, but what do we do decades from now when it's not helping and we have all the addicts? What do you do then when we are sitting in this seat and we have seen history repeat itself and you don't have to answer because this is very rhetorical, I don't even want to answer, but what do we do when it does become a problem? Do we target the black community again once they get a hold once the black community gets a hold of it or the poor community get a hold of it because that's typically what happens. I am glad to have these conversations, but I just wanted to make that comment. And like I said, you don't have to answer because it's not an answer that you can give me because everything that has been presented to help that has an addictive connotation to it has always been messed with, fooled with, and turned into something that has tore up our community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jared.

Thank you. Alright. Thank you, mister Walker. Appreciate you, sir. Thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Gonna have miss Heidi Soroka come from International Plant and Herbal Alliance. Do you have a presentation? Did you have a PowerPoint? Okay. We're trying to

keep. Okay.

Thank you for being here with us today, mister Roca. We're trying to keep our guests at about ten minutes so that questions can be asked.

Thank you. Thank you so much for allowing me to be here. Chairman Hobbs, Vice Chair Williams, and all the members of the council, I really appreciate this robust discussion. And I hope that I can really help with this issue. I actually, my name is Doctor. Heidi Secora. I'm sorry. That's okay.

I don't

But I am a retired nurse practitioner and healthcare executive. And as a nurse practitioner, I serve the most vulnerable adult geriatric and oncology patients. I fully understand the challenges of balancing benefits and harms of pharmaceuticals, over the counter meds, and herbal supplements. The issue with chronic pain is there are a few options that are safe to take daily at doses, at effective doses without the risk of serious side effects and even death. Tylenol and ibuprofen are effective pain relievers for mild and moderate pain, but for chronic severe pain, they just are not going to work and they have serious side effects and cause thousands of deaths per year.

The opioid crisis and strict prescribing guidelines have left many people suffering with severe chronic pain without options. This is a concern for everyone in this room because all of us are just just one accident or illness away from really needing help for severe pain. Many claim, and I would attest, that kratom can be lifesaving in many cases. I've read comments in the opposition to the ban on your public forum with so many people pleading not to ban kratom because it saved them from a life of pain and addiction. Many consumers do use kratom to manage withdrawals from opioids and other high risk substances.

A 2020 John Hopkins survey of more than 2,700 consumers indicated that of those who reported taking Kratom for opioid withdrawal, eighty seven percent reported relief of withdrawal symptoms and thirty five percent were opioid free for more than a year. Ninety percent of people who do need treatment for addiction do not receive it. And, that's just so important because natural kratom is an important and effective tool for harm reduction in the battle of drug addiction. I have used natural whole leaf kratom for over six years to reduce my pain from multiple rare neurological painful disorders. It has allowed me to regain my health and wellness.

A great benefit for me is it doesn't cause intoxication. My brain is very sensitive to anything. I don't even drink alcohol. It actually improves my mental clarity. In the past six years, I have gone from using a walker to building a tree house with my grandkids.

Thanks to Kratom. But I began advocating for common sense Kratom regulations after I recommended it to a friend of mine who was struggling with severe pain and PTSD from serving in the Gulf War. It was so effective for pain and anxiety, his son looked up at me and said, thank you. Thank you for giving us our daddy back. I know you understand that.

Natural whole leaf kratom restored the function of the entire family. And this is what it's doing all over this country. It's important to understand that kratom is a natural leaf that has been used safely for centuries. The most abundant alkaloid metagenin acts as a partial mu opioid agonist in the same family as coffee, And it can lead to dependence similar to caffeine. Kratom products reflecting the natural balance of the full spectrum of plant alkaloids are safe and effective.

The reason that NARCAN does not work on kratom, whole leaf kratom products is because it doesn't cause respiratory depression. As a matter of fact, there is not an identified mechanism of death. So often it is found in toxicology reports of people who have taken fentanyl, methamphetamines, etcetera. But that doesn't mean that it caused that death. So, correlation does not mean causation.

With the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives due to opioid overdoses caused by respiratory depression, it's inconceivable appreciated for its ability to provide relief for consumers for anxiety, pain, PTSD without respiratory depression. It's The FDA, as the gentleman had talked about, the FDA did conduct a study and they did show that cranium is powdered cranium very safe at really high doses, twelve grams. The average serving size is four to six grams, so that's a lot. Doctor Brett Joror, former US Assistant Secretary of Health, withdrew the FDA's proposed Kratom scheduling request in 2018, citing the agency's reliance on embarrassingly poor evidence and data. He cited concerns that a ban could lead to intractable pain, psychological distress, suicide, transition to proven deadly opioids, and transition to other potent or harmful drugs.

He requested an eight factor analysis be completed to determine if Kratom meets the criteria to be scheduled. The results of that analysis and several subsequent eight factor analyses indicated that whole leaf kratom products do not meet the criteria to be scheduled. And that's why the Ohio Board of Pharmacy previously rejected scheduling it as well. So we talked a lot about seven Oh.

Excuse me, Doctor. Sokora, I just want to say you've got about four minutes left.

Okay.

In case you want to play your video.

Yes, that's really short. There's some confusion. 7OH is not a kratom product. That we need to make that very clear. It's you should not be using the same sentence. This is H2O, water. If I take a hydrogen molecule out of this water and put it in another package, can we call it water? No. Two they're completely different things. So, this is natural powdered kratom.

It meets all the criteria that you want for people in this city. You want it to be available, you want it to be properly labeled, packaged with good manufacturing practices. This can be done. It's done all over and you can pass a local Kratom consumer protection ordinance that will do this. So, I really encourage you, you know, to do that.

So seven zero eight is not Kratom and it needs to go through the new drug application through the FDA because it does not have a right to be on the market. So I applaud your efforts to keep consumers safe. You can accomplish this through good regulations including age restrictions, good manufacturing practices, lab testing, etcetera. So common sense regulation supports those who have found Kratom to be a lifeline and avoids the unintended consequences of individuals seeking more dangerous substances that could lead to death. The Cradham Consumer Protection Act has been passed in '18 states.

We hope that it will be passed in Ohio soon. In the meantime, you know, we do have a sample Cradham Consumer Protection Ordinance that the language is all there. It's not that difficult, you know, to really get that. So this is seven zero h. I just want to point out that there's only one tab in here because the other two fell out. I did not take them. And this is not kratom.

Doctor. Court, oh, you play your video now.

Okay, all right. Okay, you ready?

And that's what we're doing today, initiating a process to schedule seven o h as an illicit substance.

We're not targeting the kratom leaf or ground up kratom. We are targeting a concentrated synthetic byproduct that is an opioid. Well, first of all, kratom is different from seven zero h. Kratom is not our focus, but kratom leaf has been around for centuries. We're so to that.

Going that. And going

to

that are popping up on every corner in America, and we wanna be educate people about that product. It's called seven o h. It has many other names. When you go really broad and say, look, everything is your brain on drugs, you're not really appropriately risk stratifying to parents who should know. It's important to distinguish the lexicon here.

So the kratom plant, which has been used in teas and other substances for centuries, may have some minimal health concerns, but it's not our focus. It's a synthetic concentrated byproduct that is stronger than oxycodone. That's where we're gonna focus, and that's where I think we can distinguish where the real public health harm is. This seven zero eight product can be deadly.

Thank you, doctor. Doctor Secora. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your presentation. Councilwoman Morris.

Before you leave, you know, you seem like a very educated person when it comes to this topic. If if it were me and I'm having some difficulty with, you know, I'm in my fifties, so I I wake up and everything hurts. So my point is is that if I as the consumer just right on my corner, literally on the corner of Lewis And Eleanor, there is a a mobile, a Boost Mobile. I'm not trying to give them business, but I'm saying is that on top of that, they also have vape stuff and they have kratom. Now, I think I'm going go in because everything hurts.

Right? I'm going go and I'm going to get kratom. And I don't know the difference between the leaf and I don't know, as the consumer, between the seven zero eight and all these other other things going on. What do I do as the consumer? Other than educating myself, right? But I've I've had a really bad day, everything hurts. I think I'm going to go and get this leaf, but how do I how do I protect myself in in knowing what to get? That's my question.

That's why regulation is really important to make sure that whatever products are out there are reflecting the natural balance of the alkaloids of the kratom plant. You know, I mean, they it it's described as a symphony orchestra of alkaloids because, you know, God made it perfect. It works perfectly the way that it is. So any any adulteration, any, you know, high concentration, you're not getting the benefit. And so often as kratom consumers, we say less is more.

It doesn't take more, it usually takes less. And that is my concern. That's why I volunteer my time to do this because I, you know, I'll always have that nurse's heart where I want people to be safe and I also want to support their autonomy and their choices. So, that's regulation can take care of that. And regulation at the local level, I think is really important.

And doing it in a way that can be effectively enforced and doesn't put a large burden on the already very important job that your police department is doing. And we've seen many communities do this and it can be done successfully. And it's that balancing the harm and benefit and making sure that it's available and accessible for those people who really, really benefit from it.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you. Councilman Melden.

Thank you, Chair. That was a good question, Councilwoman Morris. I appreciate that. I think that, again, I only ever think about public policy in this seat from the vantage point of this seat. I'm not on city council in another city, I don't live in another state, I'm thinking about this community. And in the context of this community, unfortunately, no one is helping us solve Councilwoman Morris's problems. You mentioned an option for us. I'm curious to learn more, please email me what we could pass and enact. I do wanna say something about regulation. We don't do drug regulation at the local level in our system of government.

And the truth is the way that we work around that is often through zoning, perhaps, business licensing. We think about we control what businesses have what licenses. The first gesture I made in researching what should we do about this was talking to the law department. What are we legally allowed to do? And so again, I just wanna be very, very clear.

We're bringing up a lot of really interesting points about what should happen and what would what would propel a safe environment for kratom use. And I don't know that I disagree with those things, but that's not my my job is not to wave a magic wand and have federal policy enacted. That's the job of the body politic. That's the job of our the consequence of elections every year and every single year. You said something, you shared a very, very powerful emotional significant story.

And I wanna just offer another one because I think this illuminates what is so hard about public policy. Every piece of public policy is a yes to one thing and a no to something else. If we set the speed limit at 40 miles an hour, that's what we're doing. We're saying above 40, we think is unsafe. Say under 40.

And if the next year we say, we're going to 30, it's a yes to one thing and a no to something else. Since we've been having this very public conversation, we received another email from a father who lost his son in the state of Ohio. And I think it was in the email, almost verbatim, he said, Please take action on this. It won't bring my son back, but it might save someone else's. The tension we have here is I hear you.

I have so much empathy and significant even sympathy for the pain management aspect of this conversation. So much so that I would sponsor a resolution saying we want the federal government to regulate and be able to prescribe whole leaf kratom for pain relief in this country tomorrow. I would love to pass that resolution from this body. But that is kind of what our role is. That's what our role is.

And until that happens, we have to solve for what's happening at the vape shop on the corner tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day. I just really want to make sure we're having this conversation based on what we are capable of doing for our community And the way public policy actually is enacted and what it can produce Can I is important comment to not lose today? Sight Please.

We're absolutely 100% on the same page. I am as concerned about those people that are going to get this, whether they're in Toledo or they're in Chicago or wherever they are, that's, you know, since I'm a nurse, that's my heart is to care about people. I don't want to see anybody succumb to something like this. And and yet, I know that without access to this, there will be deaths. There will be people that will lose.

So So that's where regulation and this thoughtful, wonderful conversation I mean, I really appreciate the time and your thoughtfulness to have the conversation. And I am so happy to work with you, work through it. I volunteer my time. I don't have any financial gain for this. I do this because I really care like you do, like your service here.

So, I hope that we can work through this and come to that, to the right balance. And I do have a sample. There's probably a more updated one, but there is sample of an ordinance and I think we can do this, I really do and I hope that you will allow me to work with you. And there's also other resources as far as policy and everything that are better

than

I would be at that.

Nothing further, chair. Thanks.

Thank you. Vice chair Williams.

Thank you, chair Hobbs. And this is not a question for you. I just wanna wanna make sure that my colleagues got this email from Belo where there's a death investigation going on right now here from August 15. That was the date. Right?

If I'm reading it right, August 15, and it says he had no known illnesses but had recently ingested kratom which is known to have side effects, serious side effects. There are no obvious signs of trauma. Vice was also notified so they're investigating to see it, but I guess my thing my question goes to where my colleague said is how do we know and then it go with my colleague here, we are here to focus on our local issues. A lot of the emails we got were people from Utah, all over the place, robo robo emails from people who I know use cocaine for pain relief and not kratom, but they're advocating for kratom. So we know his robo emails, I don't know who paid for the robo emails.

My issue is everybody I just told you why I'm so sincere about drugs period that caught has have addictive factors. I know we can't tell addiction, but what do we do ten years from now and this is a rhetorical question, so you don't have to answer me, I don't want to answer. What do we do ten years from now when people have messed it all up like they are now? Thank you, chair.

Thank you, doctor Sikor. Appreciate you and and thank you for being here today.

Thank you so much.

Next, we're going to have we're going to have a representative from Team Recovery. Believe Matt is here. I believe he is. Mister Matt Bell.

Good evening, chair Hobbs, vice chair Williams, rest of council on the committee. My name is Matt Bell. I am the CEO and founder of Team Recovery. I have a master's degree in social work from the University of Toledo. I'm a licensed social worker in the state of Ohio. I'm a nationally certified intervention professional. I've spent the last decade working in addiction treatment right here in Toledo. It's my hometown. I was born and raised here. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to lend some insight. I think it's also important to mention that I'm a person in recovery. I've been sober from all substances for almost ten years. I'll celebrate ten years in October. Another thank you. Might be the only applause I get tonight.

Another interesting fact about myself, which I'll get into in more detail shortly, is I've used raw leaf kratom before. Before, I believe, 07/2008 was even around. This was probably fourteen years ago when I was still in active addiction, I'll give some first hand insight on my experiences with it as a person in recovery, which is my main focus in my community. A couple disclosures on things that I am not. I am not a medical professional and I am not a expert researcher on kratom.

There's been mention here that this is a new thing. Kratom is is nothing new. It's been around for centuries. People have used this all over the world, but it is evolving here in our community. And I and when things like that happen, our community has a responsibility to evolve with it. There's been countless articles that have been referenced thus far. There's, you know, an argument that there is zero regulation around any of it, but we don't have any information. Maybe that's why we don't have any information is because it's not regulated and we cannot collect the data. I have articles. Other people will have their own articles.

These are scholarly peer reviewed articles that refute everything that's been said, that even in raw leaf form, that it can have addictive tendencies, that it can potentially be abused. It's very difficult for me to believe that something can be used for severe pain and say that it does not have addictive potential. These articles go back to the nineteen thirties, and they talk about raw leaf cratom's addictive potential and reinforcing effects. Again, other people are gonna refute that. I have something here.

We've talked about it a few times. This is a toxicology report from our community. This document shows everything that we need to know, I believe. Kratom, whether it's its raw leaf form or synthetic derivatives like seven Oh, it can be deadly. It says on here, the cause of death is anoxic encephalopathy, which is lack of oxygen to the brain, and it's caused by metronome metronome toxicity.

Metronome is the main alkaloid in raw leaf kratom. Aside from a litany of issues that it can cause, again, I'm not a medical expert, so I'm not gonna go into those details, but one of the things that I've seen firsthand with kratom is polysubstance use. I've seen people use multiple substances together with kratom. And that, from my perspective, is one of the biggest concerns that we need to to focus on here. In 2021, the CDC reported that overdose data shows that eighty percent of overdose deaths were due to polysubstance use.

What does that tell us? It tells us that people like to use more than one substance at a time. That data is important to me, again me specifically, I'm not speaking for anybody else, because I've watched people come into my treatment center, people that I know, people that I grew up with, people's kids now that I that I know, and their parents who use kratom whether it's with other substances or by itself, whether it's in its Rawley form or the seven o h derivatives. I have seen it all. Now granted, it's not very common that we see it in the Rawley form, but we have seen it.

The withdrawal process is terrible. When people utilize it in high quantities or the seven o h substances, it is not an easy substance to treat. When we talk about relapse rates rates in addiction treatment, unfortunately relapses are very very common. Relapse rates are incredibly high. The chances of someone getting sober and staying sober their first time in treatment is incredibly low.

There's not great data to support this because it's pretty difficult to track lifelong sobriety, but credible sources say that success rates of going to treatment once and staying sober for the rest of your life is about five percent. Oftentimes, people do relapse on kratom because and I was one of those people that did that, and so I do have firsthand experience to be able to say that. Because of the notion, and this is why I did it, that it's natural, that it's legal, that it's less harmful, that it's safe, that it will beat a drug test, that this treatment facility will not find out about because it can't be tested for on a 12 panel instant urinalysis cup. There's a vape shop directly across the street from my treatment center with flashing multi colored lights that say kratom. I had to go through a special use permit in this city to open up a treatment center because the community views treatment centers as dangerous.

I went through the process, I took the time, and I did what our city said had to be done, whether I agreed with it or disagreed with it. I did what set what was said had to be done. But anybody can just pop up a light knowing that it could draw somebody in directly across the street from a vulnerable population and put that anywhere they want to. Oftentimes when people do relapse on kratom, and again I can speak to doing this, more often than not it becomes a gateway back to their drug of choice. Not everybody wants to be completely sober when they get sober.

Some people wanna still alter their mood in their mind. And when they find out that there's other substances out there that they can get away with, that mom or dad won't find out about, that the drug center treatment center is not gonna kick them out for, they'll utilize it, but it doesn't give them what their drug of choice did for them. And so it is a gateway back to their drug of choice. It happens. It's exactly what happened for me.

My roommate had tea. He told me it was perfectly legal, and the treatment center couldn't test us to find out if we used it. One cup of tea might be fine for some people. But we drank dozens of cups, and I'm venturing to guess that some people will laugh about that or think that that's absolutely crazy. If people will drink a 12 pack of beer to catch a better buzz, people will drink more of anything or eat more of anything to increase their buzz and to enhance the effect.

Look, I don't think we're arguing that leaf form kratom is the most dangerous drug that we've ever seen. I've heard an argument that it is less harmful than other drugs like seven zero eight. I wouldn't necessarily even disagree with that statement or that concept overall, but that doesn't mean that we let anybody or specifically kids buy this at corner stores and vape shops. Less harmful does not mean harmless. Less harmful does not mean harmless.

Just because something comes from the ground and it's natural does not mean that it can't be dangerous. I'll end with this. This isn't about good drugs or bad drugs. There's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna come up and argue argue why they love this substance, why it has saved their life, why they believe it should be unregulated. There's gonna be other people that will argue that. This isn't about good or bad. I'm sure some people can benefit from Kratom the same way that some people can benefit from an OxyContin. I wouldn't be able to do that, but a terminal cancer patient might. I could make that same argument. Some people might benefit from an Adderall.

Some people might benefit from a Newport after this meeting, because it could relieve their stress, even though it says this will kill you on the label. People will make arguments for anything. This is about the simple truth that in today's world, people will do anything to alter their mood and their mind. In the regulation of substances, even the less harmful or potentially beneficial ones, is a completely practical and responsible step to protect our citizens, not just right now, but for generations to come. To me, this is a no brainer.

When I ask myself, would I allow my children to take this? It is an undoubted no. We have an opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive here. We are just now seeing the results from progress from the opioid epidemic. Just now starting to see some positive trends.

Just now. Countless agencies for decades to decrease death, to increase access to care, to implement harm reduction techniques, making policies for pain clinics more stringent, the rollout of ORS reports, the list goes on and on. We've been working on it for decades. The number one diagnosis I see at Team Recovery and the most other treatment centers in the country see is opioid use disorder. And here we are talking about another substance that has an affinity to the same opioid receptors in the brain. As I said before, this is a no brainer to me. I firmly and proudly support this proposed legislation. I applaud our Toledo City Council members for proposing this legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, CEO Bell. Councilman Melden.

Thank you, chair. Thanks for being here, and thanks for sharing. I'm curious if Team Recovery offers kind of advocacy relative to public policy, in a necessary just like weighing in, offering I think my testimony on various pieces of public policy. Literally, that's what you're doing right here, I understand that. But I'm just curious, I mean, is not necessarily a new concept of how to regulate and legislate around Kratom.

I'm curious if Team Recovery has offered any insight in any other communities. I know you're focused here. And if not, would you be open to sharing kind of high level public policy insights, even maybe some direction? That was the previous Doctor. Sikora I asked that same question, I'm open to hearing more. Curious how you think about public policy advice. So

We do that in as much capacity as we possibly can, again this is an example of us doing that. I'm not an expert in that, so it's very difficult for me to say, I haven't thought that question out or put a ton of thought into that, but the proposed legislation makes perfect sense to me. I don't know how else to say it. If we don't start somewhere, there's going to be fallout. Somebody said that death will happen if this ban happens. Death is already happening. If we don't start somewhere, we can't get our arms around this. And so as already mentioned, there's gonna be happy people, there's gonna be upset people. If we change the speed limit, there's happy people, there's gonna be upset people. We have to do what's best for our community. This proposed legislation makes perfect sense to me. We have to start somewhere.

Thanks, chair.

Okay. I want to say before we start, I am going to do my best, I promise you that I can read. But some of the names here, it is hard to see what your name may particularly be. So I do not mean to offend you. I am going to do my best to read the names.

You will be given three minutes, please. You will be given three minutes. I think the first name is Anne Petlow, Petlow. Anne Petlow.

Would you like me to speak

here? Yes. Thank you.

Hi. Thank you, esteemed members of city council. I'm Anne Petlow. I'm a daughter of a nursing professor for Johns Hopkins, Hanuman Mother and Baby Hospital, and I'm a sex educator since 1997. I have taught sex ed at Cincinnati Public and Private Schools and here in Toledo Public.

I would encourage city council to think of the addicted population that we serve as citizens, taxpayers, voters first. They are adults. They go to meetings. They take their recovery very seriously and responsibly. If city council can ban these seven o h products, I'm also the daughter of a commercial landlord, and we rent to pharmacies and carryouts.

If we can decrease the burden on the small business owner, like maybe make it 25 to get the products that you're concerned about, 21, if there's a zoning regulation that is within your purview to make these products that you're concerned about, adults have to jump through a hoop, we could do that in Lucas County I think very simply without affecting the adult tax paying population that needs a pain control alternative. So we're six to seven months out from having new people uninsured because the federal government is not going to help us. For the next four to five years, we're not gonna have any help from the feds, from the chair of the FDA. That is not a person that's gonna help us with that. Regardless of politics, city council will have to adjust.

So your concern at the local level, I respect it and I hear it. Let's put a burden on the gas station owner, on the smoke shop owner that the state of Ohio will approve. It'll save the city legal department some headaches. And those six deaths that you're concerned about, the polypharmacy deaths, a lot of polypharmacy deaths occur among addicts and we can't start to think about Kratom as this gateway drug. I would encourage you to think of it as something adults who are serious about their recovery could possibly use with responsible hoops to jump through if we set it up right in Lucas County.

We will always have a transient population. We will always have young people trying to use drugs. Recovery. Let's serve those populations best by treating them like people who can always have an ID, pass a check. If it doesn't show up on a panel, let's make it show up on a panel or find the funding. But we don't have four years or five years to wait for the feds to fix this for us. And with that I pass. Any questions you can ask me?

Thank you. Thank you again. Will Bennett.

Thank you Council and Board for the opportunity to speak. I was a creative muser in college. I used the capsule form and the powder form. I've tapered off. The effects of tapering off for me were nothing more than a cold and some sleepless nights, and it lasts for a few days.

That's what tapering and quitting kratom is any more than quitting caffeine was for me. I fundamentally disagree with this legislation for a couple of reasons. Number one, if we do not draw a dichotomy between seven zero eight and Kratom, then by banning Kratom as a blanket term, it will allow these bad actors to design things that don't count as Kratom and still sell it, which will put you in a situation where you have the more dangerous thing legal and a less dangerous thing banned. I also disagree with promoting that we should schedule kratom to be schedule one. What all that does is criminalize the people in this room, the hardworking men and women.

Is that what the council wants to do to say these people who are workers, family members, whatever, that use this to manage their pain should in some way be criminal in the future in the state? I just don't think that's fair. And in that, I rest my peace.

Thank you. Thank you. Angela and Lee, I think it's Schaeffer. Angela and Lee. Okay.

I think this is Crystal Cierre, c, I think, c I e r. Cole, Cole, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Crystal Cole. I am disabled since '37. I am now 43 years old to no fault of my own. I have a genetic condition that affects every bit of my body. It's the collagen, it's Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.

I went to pain management from 2009 to 2021, discontinued when I because I refused to put a spinal cord stimulator in my back. That's because I have a titanium allergy. I will not be putting any implants in my body. I then suffered an iatrogenic injury and ended up having a stroke because nobody knew how to taper the meds that my doctor had me on. I tapered myself for two years miserably, and then about six months, I couldn't get up and walk, I sat and I cried, with my boyfriend looking at me, suicidal, and telling him I can't live like this anymore.

My boyfriend, who doesn't even take kratom, told me he has a friend with cancer that uses kratom leaf. He said, I think it would be beneficial. You've tried every supplement under the sun. Literally, I have a thousand supplements from around the world that I have tried to help my chronic pain. I was so terrified of Kratom. I did two weeks of research, couldn't find a whole lot of information, joined online communities to see what they were talking boyfriend bought the bag of whole leaf, which is ground up then. The guy said, you take this and this for day and night. Okay. It says to take two teaspoons to two grams, it's about the same weight, for a first serving. I did that.

I didn't feel much. I took another teaspoon, so that's three grams. I then got up without realizing it using my walker and walked to the kitchen without collapsing in pain. I then started crying because I felt like I had a piece of my life back. Because the doctors, the DEA has so far overreached that they don't want to prescribe because they're so scared to make me an addict. What am I supposed to do? Sit sideways, horizontal for years waiting to die? I have about ten years left, if I'm lucky. Lucky. Kratom Leaf has saved my life, and it's not just me.

I'm representing the fifty million chronic pain patients in The United States. Forty percent of them cannot get proper pain management. The suicide list is growing and growing in the chronic pain community. Had they heard of Kratom, these people might be alive. They didn't know what to do.

They they they've also helped with the doctor patient forum to try to bridge the gap between doctors and the the communication between chronic pain patients and doctors. This is gonna affect my life, my future. I've been touched by addiction. My father dropped dead of a heroin overdose in 1987. It has affected my whole entire life, and he's not the only addict I have in my family.

My doctors didn't tell me I would become dependent on my pain meds, dependent on benzodiazepines, dependent on the gabapentin they put me on. Those things caused me tachycardia, high blood pressure, pitting edema. I ended up going from a hundred and twenty five pounds to two hundred pounds because they kept stuffing me with non FDA approved steroid injections straight into my spine that have caused me osteopenia. And they sit there and tell me it's

missed call.

It is very painful.

Thank you.

Kratom has saved my life.

Thank you. Thank you.

It still matter. Sorry if they're gone, but we're still here.

Chris Kaminski.

Okay. Council or council, thank you guys for doing this. I am the owner of Cavaculture, Cavabar right on Monroe in Toledo and I also own one in Ann Arbor that we will be opening. We sell kratom in drinks. It is in pure leaf, crushed leaf form the way that it has been done, taken for decades or centuries by places throughout the world.

It is safe. I have, you know, I could go on with already, we've been open seven months with testimonials of people, how it saved their life and changed their life. We are a bar. We don't serve alcohol. We serve kava, which is another all natural drink that is really good for anxiety.

We serve kratom, like I said. These things change people's lives because people who can't go to a bar because of addiction, who are in recovery, they can come to a place like our bar, which I invite everybody here to come see what we're about, and I will show you how we brew and make the kratom, but it gives them a safe place to go, to be entertained, to have a life outside of I can't go to the bar again because I'm an addict, I have triggers. Okay? There are a lot of very positive things. I am blown away by some of the statements that have been made to me and my wife and my children at the bar.

Once again, how it saved people's lives because it's given them a chance to get out. It's given them a chance to not worry about addiction. I could I'm not a doctor, so I'm not gonna, you know, go into details of what I have learned in that aspect. I just want to let the council know that there are very safe ways to take this. There are ways to manage it and there are ways to make sure that we don't have kids getting it, that it's not we're not giving the 7 Oh.

For Caboculture as a franchise, there's 25 bars throughout the country mostly in Florida, but we are the only synthetic and extract free Cabo bar out there. So the owners of the bar or the company that we bought into are very responsible on that and that is why I chose that. I retired from a thirty year career and we found this and my wife and I, we thought it would be a great thing to bring to the community because people are looking for alternatives to go out and be, you know, public interaction without going to the bar. And this is like us and specifically, this gives them a place to do that and it also gives them drinks that they could enjoy and not worry about getting behind the wheel and driving home, not worry about any other issues. So I hope you guys just take that into consideration.

Thank you.

Thank you sir. Erica King.

I'm Erica and thank you for having us here. I don't have an eloquent speech, but I'd like to address a couple of the comments that were made up here. A lot of times we notice things because people complain. That's when they come to our attention. People who are doing well, they don't often come up and explain themselves. I'm from the a child from the sixties, so I dabbled. I didn't need recovery. I used kratom occasionally. But speaking to your supplements, what do I use? I do research, you know.

With my food, I eat clean, and if you look at, for example, heavy whipping cream. Heavy whipping cream, Land O'Lakes organic cream, you would think that would be healthy. If you read it, it has polysorbate 80 in it. What is that doing in healthy cream? Medications have side effects.

Acetaminophen hurts your liver and your tissue. It's like taking a square peg and jamming it into a round hole. Yes, it works, but it's going to create tissue damage. My rhetorical question is do we ban food and water? Our food is more accessible, our water is dirty, what are we going to do about that? Anyway,

thank

thank

you. Is it Noreen Wasylinski? If I said it wrong, I apologize. Please tell me correctly.

Thank you so much. Chair Hobbs and counsel, my name is Noreen Wasilewski. I am the CEO of Arrowhead Behavioral Health. It's a 48 bed stand alone psychiatric facility that also offers substance abuse treatment. I am also the current chair of Northwest of NAMI, National Association of Mental Illness.

So I have a long history in, I'm a nurse by trade with all the kinds of other degrees, but a long history of behavioral health as well as substance abuse as part of my career. I appreciate what Matt Bell had commented on. You know we have been in the opioid epidemic for over ten years and we are for the very first time seeing a decrease in opioid overdoses. So despite that, the war on drugs continues. It's not going away just because we're seeing a decrease in all that.

And now we get to add more names to that and that being Kratom. So as long as we have individuals that are struggling with their mental health, we will have individuals out there finding ways, any way they can, to self medicate and to relieve and help cope with their pain. Two point one million individuals in the state of Ohio alone are dealing with mental illness and mental health crises. Forty five percent of those individuals get treatment. That's wonderful.

Fifty five percent do not. That's the one million fifty five percent that I'm concerned about. I could pick up my phone and show you just the request that I received the other day of an individual that's been on Kratom that wants addiction, Help with addiction. So it is dangerous, it is unregulated, it is highly addictive and like any other addiction, it impacts families, it tears them apart. The stories I can tell you, the stories that you've all heard before, damages careers.

So putting something unlabeled on a shelf to me is just plainly irresponsible. I don't put cough medicine in just says cough medicine. It doesn't tell me the side effects and it doesn't tell me what the effects of usage are. In this meth cocaine and kratom are all stimulants. They're on the rise.

Fentanyl is decreasing. It's a highly addictive substance, stimulant. It's like a bag of chips, right, or a bag of Pringles, you just can't have one. We experienced over four thousand five hundred overdoses in the state of Ohio last year in 2024. Regulating Kratom is the least that we could do for potential users. Thank you so much.

Questions?

Thank you. I think it's Bradley Freeman.

Good Good afternoon council members. My name is Bradley Freeman. I'm a born and raised Toledoan, and I'm here to present our petition opposing the kratom ban, which has until now garnered over 400 signatures. And I've also prepared some NIH published studies on the safety of raw leaf kratom and natural kratom extracts that I'd like to present to you on behalf of those 400 supporters. According to a study designed by the FDA to evaluate the respiratory effects of opioids, Kratom did not yield significant respiratory depressant or life threatening effects nor did it produce any evidence of respiratory depression at doses many times higher than what is known to be taken by Kratom users.

Another review of Kratom research showed few hazards with most uses. Researchers concluded that Kratom has real therapeutic benefits and presented few risks. They also noted that the World Health Organization's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence examined the evidence regarding Krativ's health effects and they concluded that there is insufficient evidence of its adverse effects that would warrant inclusion in the UN's list of international controlled substances. Maybe most tellingly was a 2017 survey of American kratom users who were asked how, quote, troubling they felt their kratom use was on a scale of zero to a 100. Zero being not troubling at all and 100 being very troubling.

And on average, they answered a 3.2 out of 100. Given all this scientific evidence and medical literature detailing raw kratom safety, we would like to urge the council to vote no on the proposed kratom ban and the resolution and consider rewriting this ordinance to focus solely on regulating synthetic seven zero h and other unnaturally concentrated products. References to all the studies that I cited along with a link to our petition are in the packets that I submitted. I don't know if you guys got those. Good. I will also email you guys digital copies for your convenience as well as copies to the rest of the council.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Allison Egan.

Good evening members of council. My name is Allison Egan, you said it correctly. I am here today to urge you to vote no on the proposed ban on kratom leaf. Everyone in this room that is here to urge you to vote no is a taxpaying, law abiding member of this community. We are all responsible adults who are trying to keep you from banning a plant that in its natural leaf form is incredibly safe. Kratom is a part of my wellness routine. I use it safely, and I'm here to show you today that it is not comparable to opioids. I was an opioid addict, on and off for about a decade. And in fact, in eleven days, I'll have eight years clean off of opiates. Kratom is gentle.

Thank you.

Kratom is gentle, opioids or not. Kratom leaf has never made me go into withdrawal and feel so sick that I considered committing crimes to get money. Kratom has not landed me in CTF for ninety days. I did not need to be Narcanned or I did not need to go to rehab for Kratom, and I was in rehab a lot. My family signed the petition, the change.org petition that you received, because they know that this is not the same, and they have seen me at my worst. I now have a stable job that I've been at for four years. While in active use, I had 10 jobs in two years. I pay my taxes, I pay my bills, and while I was in active use, I did not. Kratom leaf did not get me clean off of opioids, as we've heard that's happened in some cases. But it is simply a plant that I take along with my other supplements and vitamins.

If you ban the leaf, you are taking away a perfectly safe alternative to pharmaceuticals and in some cases street drugs to your constituents who use it safely without issue. I've known dozens of people that have died because of opioids. And I know many, many more who are leading normal, happy lives on plain leaf cratom. And let me be clear, the leaf is not the same as the seven zero H. We do not want the ban on the leaf. The seven zero H, you can do whatever you want with that. And a couple of things I wanted to say as far as things being available or looking enticing to young children. In places like specifically like The Shed, which has been a part of Toledo for like fifty years, they keep it behind the counter. And you have to be 18 to go into the shop in the first place. Kids aren't going have access to that.

Some of the corner stores I'm not too sure about, but I know that the reputable I'm sorry, the Head Shed, they do require IDs to purchase these things, they are behind the counter. And as far as it being just a stimulant, there are different strains of leaf kratom, and some of those strains have different effects. Some might be more relaxing, similar to a kava. The stimulant might be similar to a coffee, and it is in fact in the coffee plant, by the way. That's pretty much all I got. Thank you.

Thank you. Corey Melhort.

Melhoort, by the way. Mel Hoyt.

Thank you.

Good evening. I just wanted to I I got something written down, but I just wanted to start off by saying that a lot of people are talking about this this leaf. I did start off taking the leaf, and I ended up doing the So there's a there's a big difference between the two. I'm not I'm not talking about seven zero eight. I'm talking about leaf kratom and extract kratom.

Okay? There's a big difference between potencies of them. I started off mildly with powders, pills, okay, then I graduated. I had to shop around, I had to trial and error, buy different products until I came to the conclusion of what I wanted was the most potent kind that I thought I could get. Well, this is four years ago, which was called OPMS or kratom extract, which were very expensive by the way.

And I would start my morning off by drinking three of these extracts at $20 a piece, that would be $60 out of my pocket. So I was taking high volumes of this stuff. I just wanted to get that out of the way. By the way, my name is Corey, and I'm here today to urge you to ban the sale and distribution of kratom in our city. I want to share a personal story. I was clean from heroin for a full year, working hard every day to stay sober to build my life back. One afternoon, I walked into a local vape shop with a friend. On the counter, I saw a small bottle labeled mood relaxing. It looked harmless. No worrying labels.

No real explanation of what it was. I figured why not. By the way, after I did drink this product, I did I felt high. I noticed I had a relapse, an accidental relapse, because I didn't know what I was taking. When I looked at the bottle, on the back of it, it did say in small print, this product contains kratom.

And if I would have known that, I would have never touched it. Within minutes of taking it, I felt an effect almost identical to high dose opiate pain killers. The so called harmless and herbal supplement reawakened the addiction I had fought so hard to escape. I found myself going to these shops multiple times a day, chasing that same feeling. Before long, I was back in rehab, not for heroin this time, but for kratom.

It didn't stop there. Kratom became the gateway that led me back into harder drugs. The withdrawal from Kratom was just as real. Goosebumps, nightmares, crushing depression, restless leg syndrome, and it lasted even longer than when than when I was coming off of heroin. I think apparently it has a longer half life, they would call it as heroin. Kratom is not safe. It destroys lives quietly, often under the radar. I am living proof of what it can do even to someone who is already on the path to recovery. Please protect our community, ban Kratom in our city before more people get hurt. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. James Jones.

Good evening council members. First off, thank you for being here tonight, for listening, caring, and serving. My name is Doctor. James Jones, a board certified osteopathic family medicine and addiction medicine physician practicing here in Toledo, currently providing addiction, psychiatric, and primary care services at a 75 bed inpatient detox facility. I'm here today because I'm deeply concerned about the growing availability and use of kratom in our community.

I've treated patients who are suffering from agitation, hallucinations, liver disease, seizures, and even dangerous heart rhythms after using and abusing this natural and safe substance. I'm currently treating a client detoxing off kratom that's required three injections of SUBLOCADE plus a variety of other different medications to finally get them stabilized and comfortable three weeks after starting the process, which is three times longer than the average fentanyl patient of mine detoxing. We all know that kratom is often sold openly at gas stations, smoke shops, and online places where teenagers can access it with ease. There's no age restriction, no quality control, and no requirement to disclose its risks. This lack of regulation puts our most vulnerable citizens, our youth, our pregnant women, and our precious community members struggling with addiction directly in harm's way.

The FDA has issued multiple warnings, and several states and cities have restricted or banned Kratom sales due to its dangers. Toledo should not wait until more of our residents are harmed or lost before taking action. The United States has had issues with many substances throughout our history. Let's focus on two of them for a moment. Let's call them substance A and substance B.

Both substances A and B occur naturally as plant products, work on receptors in the brain. They are originally used for their therapeutic benefits and can have effects include alertness, increased stamina, decreased appetite, euphoria. They are or were regularly sold at pharmacies, smoke shops, bars, grocery stores, mail order. They both have devastating addiction potential that was discovered much later after their use became widespread. They both have had or will have laws and regulations enacted to control the substance to prevent the damaging effects of the substance. Now can you guess what substance a is? Councilwoman Williams already mentioned it. Cocaine in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. What is substance b? Kratom.

Right here, right now. We have a duty to protect our community. That means enacting local ordinances to restrict sales, implementing age limits requiring clear product labeling, or even an outright ban of cratom while we figure this out. We need to send a message that we value the health and safety of our residents over the profit of those selling a dangerous unrelated unregulated drug. Any medical or therapeutic benefit should be researched, vetted, and recommended by the FDA before public use. If we do nothing, Kratom will quietly continue to fuel addiction, increase emergency room visits, and create even more broken families in Toledo. But if we act now, we can save lives. I urge you to take immediate steps to limit kratom sales in our city. The cost of inaction will be measured in lives, and that is far too high a price to pay. Thank you.

Thank you. Charmaine Bassett or Bassett?

You got it right, Bassett.

Bassett.

Alright. So I've been at this for fifty nine years. You might have heard of my family, Bassett's Health Foods. I'm Charmaine Bassett. And we have been literally fighting for natural products, the right to use them and how to properly regulate them. And although I agree with almost everything that everybody has set up here, except for the addiction part. Because I will tell you right now, they have cratons as addictive as coffee, actually not as much. It's as addictive as sugar, actually not as much. And I could go on and on with that list. I have taken care of addicts for sixty nine years for fifty nine years.

And I will tell you that when you go to these rehab places, where I've worked with a lot of these doctors, I myself having two doctorate degrees, they don't take care of the sugar part, and they don't take care of the other addictions. And they want to take one addiction and swap it for another. Kraton does not work like that. You actually have receptor sites in your body. So here's my thing.

Is I agree with almost everything everybody said and thank you everybody for showing up tonight, but it kind of plagues me a little bit having fought on the front lines for natural products that you all were a little bit more informed than you before you got here. Because I mean, all the research has been stated by several people here, and I have it, I can leave it with you all, and I'll be happy to because I'm about education. My family has always been about education. And the laws are already in place. All you all's job is, is to make sure that they go out there and pull the illegal stuff off the counter, not regulate the natural products that my family has fought for, for everybody in The United States.

My dad passed a Senate House bill called DSHEA, Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, Health and Education Act. And that was to fight for our rights because we do have the right to inform consent. But you know what also Beyer beware because he is also the one that started GMP, good manufacturing products because he got really sick of going into stores and pulling vitamins off the shelf and having them tested and nothing that was on the label was in the bottle. Are you all doing anything about there to care about that? Can I tell you some of that stuff that was in those bottles besides nothing that was on the label?

For people that have been giving good products and bringing forward good products for forty to fifty nine, sixty years, fifty nine years, okay. It gets a little old that I am fighting for the good people when we should be taking care of the bad people. So if you all really care that you don't know what's happening when you go in the store to buy it, let me tell you something. You should put that concern, please, I beg you, on my hands and knees to put that concern into every single product that you purchase. Because if you all did that, everybody did that, we wouldn't be in this mess because it's buyer beware.

And then I wouldn't have to work so hard jumping up and down and screaming with my hair on fire, trying to get rid of everybody that's poisoning us to death right now. To death. Do you know all your toothpaste, one of my my pharmacist friends told me today, she's here, she said in all the toothpaste they're testing now, there's lead. Do all know every day you're brushing your teeth with lead? Or did you do you care about that? I care about that more than nothing, Kraton. Because you're gonna need more pain pills and more opiates and more over the counter NSAIDs, which are gonna kill you, okay, to take care of that neurological damage, which is what got me into Kratom. I got bit by a brown recluse spider.

Thank you.

And when it cut off my toe and I and I was not going to take synthetics.

Thank you, Ms. Ross.

And I

took care of neurological pain. What do you all have for that with that lead poisoning? What do you all do for that?

Susan Metzger.

Hi, my name is Susan Matzger, and I just wanted to say that there are articles out there that, this one in particular, it's Kratom Abuse Potential 2021 An Updated Eight Factor Analysis. And from Frontiers in Pharmacology, frontiersin.org. And this particular study was a summary of all the other studies. They tested kratom, they tested kratom at high doses. This is leaf kratom.

It's not seven zero eight because that's a new thing on the scene. And they came to the conclusion that it does not need to be regulated, not the leaf, the seven zero eight is another story. And Councilman Williams, the reason it cannot be reversed with Narcan is because it's not a respiratory depressant. Narcan only works on narcotics. If you have a benzodiazepine, you need something different.

But, I, the seven zero eight I don't know but when you see Kratom listed as in polypharmacy, was it Leaf Kratom or was it seven zero eight? They never differentiate. But I was going to say that this study goes into a lot of the it reviews other studies, it's comprehensive and they came to the conclusion that it should not be a substance or category one substance not the leaf kratom because they don't see a potential for abuse but seven zero eight is you know that's a different animal. When they start doing extracts and synthesizing stuff just like these opioids, you know synthetic opioids, you're looking at a different thing and they're usually more addictive. And as far as the lead in the toothpaste, there is a website called Lead Safe Mama and she went and went through all the as many toothpastes as she could analyze finding unbelievable amounts of lead in some of these toothpastes.

So you might want to look there to make sure you're not making your pain worse. Know, you get it out of the paint and it shows up in the toothpaste. Pharmacist by the way. Yes, I'm a pharmacist. So I when you you come when people get treated for opioid addiction, they get treated with Suboxone and they get treated with Methadone.

So that's sort of like hair of the dog that bit you, you know. And I don't see them getting off of it, they just get it for years and years and years. If they have a chance to take the leaf and it doesn't work for everybody but it works for some people and, you know, taper down and get off of it, there should be other stuff available. But I still think the leaf, the pure leaf and the seven zero eight are two very different animals. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Metzger. I I believe this is Alicia Carsten. Alicia Carsten.

Well, had a bunch of studies, but boy, people have kind of hit those pretty good. But I wanted to let you know, kratom has been used for over a thousand years safely, okay? Since 2018, there's been over four fifty published scientific studies so much of that is what encouraged the WHO to reverse its decision as well as the DEA to reverse their decision on recommending a scheduling of Kratom. Be happy to send all of that to you, but like I said, everyone's hit that pretty hard. So I just kind of want to talk about my story right here.

I have been at rheumatoid arthritis since I was five years old. I've had kidney problems, Crohn's, cancer, brain damage from a car accident with thoracic outlet syndrome, all before the age of 21. From 13 to 21, I was on multiple meds. Three Skelaxin, three Flexerol, eight hundred milligrams of Motrin per day from 13 to 19, as well as steroids, as well as they always tried to put me on antidepressants. I wasn't depressed, I was in pain. There's a difference. Okay? And they didn't work. They did destroy my kidneys. They did destroy my liver.

Okay? I didn't find kratom until forties, till I was 40. I'm 59. In that time, I had multiple damage to my body from all the pharmaceuticals. Okay? First time I did Kratom, I can see where someone might confuse it as getting high or getting a buzz. Because imagine if you've never been out of pain. If you've never been out of pain, and for the first time in your life you are, do you think that's gonna feel like a buzz? Yeah, it is. Okay.

I've been using Kratom, like I said, since I was 40. My initial dose was a quarter of a teaspoon. And now at 49, it's a teaspoon and a half. Okay? That's over years and years and years and years of use.

And I only do that once a day because that's all it takes to get me up and moving, and then I can get through the day. My diagnosis at 21 on all those meds was that I wasn't supposed to live past 30. I quit most of those meds in my late twenties and started working with natural medicine, gave up my first two degrees, and became a naturopathic doctor. And since that time, I have helped other people with their pain management as well as their addictions coming off gradem. Everything on this planet, you are able to get addicted to.

Everything. That's part of your personality, it's part of your chemistry makeup, if you have enough glutamine in your system. Okay? So, there is a mild addiction, but I'll tell you what, I've seen much worse someone trying to come off sugar or fructose syrup. Okay? Had bigger reactions than they decided to stop kratom for a while.

Thank you, miss Carsten. Thank you.

My point is get rid of the synthetic. Get rid of the h two o, absolutely, because yes, that does damage, but leave the natural alone.

Thank you. Erica Teska. Jared Cunningham.

Thank you Chairman Hobbs. Thank you committee for meeting here today. It's very clear that a lot of the people in this room care very much on this subject and I'm definitely grateful to be able to give a voice. My name is Jarrett Cunningham. I went through the University of Toledo and graduated back in 2020 as a film major.

And I've lived in and out of the area for about six, seven years. I remember Kratom being introduced at various smoke shops and such because as kids do we dabble. And it was around that point where I definitely could see a lot of problems with the way in which it's being packaged, with the way it was being specifically marketed in those specific areas as mood enhancers or relaxers or stimulants and such. It wasn't something that I myself had never touched. I've been around a couple people who have gone in and out where they would get powder, press it into a personal pill form, maybe take a couple a day and use that to replace their morning cup of coffee and saw not too much of a differing effect with it.

I can't speak to what the specific sciences are as a lot of people I think are learning a lot of different statistics today and will definitely need to take a lot of time to soak it all in. I can definitely say that there is a regulation issue. I can also say that there's a reason why a lot of people may have started to shift towards using products that are deemed more natural. In the same way that questions were raised as to why this wasn't seen on grocery store shelves, there's a lot of politics that get involved with trying to get something that you're gonna see in your local Meijer or your local Walmart or your Kroger's. It has to go through a lot of steps, lot of hoops and even the stuffs that you do end up picking up will still have that label on there where it's FDA accepted but not approved saying these statements have not been evaluated yet.

But they're still making claims that they could be burning fat. That they could be helping increase your mood or helping you focus more. I can definitely say that there's also a lot of politics involved with how products get recommended by doctors. With how things going from whenever I have to go and get medication. A lot of people out there may be aware of the fact that sometimes doctors get visited by people trying to sell prescriptions in the same way that people might try and buy a car.

It's been told that sometimes the cure is not going to yield. This isn't the proper phrase but the money is not in the cure but in the medicine. I would definitely say that this is something where I believe that there should be regulation. It should be definitely 21 plus and there should ultimately just be more studies done on that. And with that I yield. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Cunningham. Alright. We have a couple of people here tonight. This is going to shift a little bit from Kratom. So just letting you know, the next couple of comments are going to shift from Kratom. Mr. Steve Harris. We still have three minutes. Good evening. Good evening.

Thank you, chairman Hobbs and, other, chairman other committee members. I'm here representing the agenda of Sports Bar and Grill, and we're here to talk about the regarding the discriminatory treatment of black owned nightlife businesses. Members of Toledo City Council, I'm I'm writing to formally express deep concern and disappointing disappointment regarding the recent closure of the Genas Sports Bar and Grill, a black owned business that has long provided entertainment, jobs, and community engagement in Toledo. The city's decision to shut down the establishment following an incident of violence that occurred off the premises is just an unjust, excrementary, and harmful to our community. While public safety is undeniable, a priority for all of us all, it is important to recognize that the issue of violence in in Toledo is a citywide problem, as we can all agree.

Not one created or preparatory solely by nightlife venues, particularly those owned by black entrepreneurs, holding businesses responsible for criminal acts that occur outside of their property, not only misplaced the blame, but also unfairly jeopardizes livelihoods, stigmatism, black business owners, and scourge investments in our community and throughout. The closure of the Agenda Sports Bar and Grill has left employees without jobs, deprived patrons of safe social outlet outlet, reinforcing damaging per perception that black owned knife life establishes are targeted more harshly than others. Rather than punishing these businesses, the city of Toledo should be working in collaboration with owners to develop solutions that promote safety while protect protecting economic opportunity. We urge and ask the city to re reconsider and reverse the decision to close the agenda sports bar, establish fair, transparent, and nondiscriminatory policies for addressing incidents of violence and proximity to nightlife establishments. Engage directly with black business owners in Toledo to build corrupt cooperative strategies for safety and community well-being.

We all want a safer Toledo. I think we all can agree to that, but safety will not be achieved by scapegoating black businesses. It will only come through partnership, fairness, and a commitment commitment to equality. We respectfully request a meeting with city leadership to discuss the matter further and to work towards solutions and support public safety and economic justice. Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry. I didn't see. Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you. Agenda Sports Bar is in District 6 and I feel very strongly in support of what you had said. I believe that there has been a different system when it comes to black owned establishments and I will take you up on that meeting because I think it's important I I met with the mayor this morning. I mentioned it again this morning and I know that that the owner is going to appeal that decision and I am happy to discuss this further. So, I'm sorry, I will will meet with you.

So, and and the owners and any other owners that would like to sit down. So, please contact my office. I don't have your contact information, but please contact my office. I will be more than happy. My name is right here. So, please, let's let's have a discussion. Thank you very much.

And as the as the chair of public safety, I am also interested in being in that meeting as well. So I will follow the lead of my district council member, Theresa Morris, in supporting her in this endeavor. Councilwoman Williams.

Thank you so much. I'm glad that but what I wanna do is, real quick, can I know we got two more people to speak, but can, the black bar owners please stand up? I just wanna say thank you for coming out and supporting, the agenda. I do also plan on attending that. I know when I did talk to Sean, I told him to come to this meeting. Said, you want to you want your voice heard, just come to this meeting. And I know there's two other people, but I wanted to make sure that folks know that agenda is supported. Thank you.

Okay. Mister I think it's John Coleman. What is it? Oh, I'm sorry. Ja Coleman. I'm sorry. Sorry, miss Ja.

Okay. So I'm Ja Leah Coleman. I am an employee at the Agenda Sports Bar and Grill. Equity means fairness and fairness requires that all communities regardless of race, income level, or voter turnout be afforded the same protection rights and responsibilities under the law. Low income and historically marginalized communities such as many black neighborhoods in Toledo are often subject to inequitable treatment. While crime is a serious concern across our entire city, it

is

unjust and discriminatory when black owned businesses are disproportionately targeted for punishment or regulatory scrutiny after acts of violence occur. While non black owned I 'm sorry, while non black owned establishments in similar circumstances are sub, I mean are not subjected to the same measures. Sorry, I'm nervous guys. For example, violent incidents have occurred at or near non black owned establishments such as gas stations, shopping malls, and restaurants without resulting in those businesses being unfairly penalized or having their license threatened. Yet, when the when violence occurs near a black owned business, it is often used as grounds to justify harsher treatment and discriminatory outcomes.

This is this undermines, I'm sorry, not only the principles of equity but also public confidence in our institutions. Specifically, I raised concerns regarding the recent double homicide incident that occurred off the premises of agenda sports bar, a black owned establishment. While this tragedy should never be minimized, it is essential to recognize that agenda was not the location where the crime took place. Nonetheless, there have been cause to suspend or revoke the license. To impose such a punishment will be discriminatory when compared to how the city of Toledo has responded to the similar incidents at non black owned businesses.

We as residents and taxpayers have the right to be served and protected equally by our city government and its agencies. We should not be subject to discrimination simply because our community communities are low income or predominantly black. Our leaders have a duty to uphold justice, equity, and fairness for all. Thank you.

Miss Jah Coleman. Thank you. Got it right. Mister Sean Love. Mister Sean Love.

Mister Sean Love.

Good evening.

How you doing? I'm just, we just got a ruling last week. It was kinda to me is is kinda a shocker that that we got a, you know, a ruling of a year suspension. But, I mean, we did everything we possibly could do do, like, far as having the police officers, having security. We got camera system, and that and all that was the the ruling I mean, that that was put in place prior to this.

And if you look at the police reports, we only have 15 police reports in four years, and most of them was most of them was, you know, taken by the police station. There wasn't no cops ever came to the agenda only, like, twice. And, I mean, if if the mayor you know, the mayor even stated that this was kinda the worst weekend that we ever had in history kinda on the fourth of July weekend, and we just was a part of it. And I just, you know, I just felt like we were just I mean, just far as just being a black bar or just being targeted, I mean, I'd I'd really don't I can't say, you know, why the punishment was so harsh. Even even if it was a conversation, you know, prior to that, just say, hey.

You know, let's let's come up with some type of solution. We wasn't given no warning. We weren't on the service. I mean, we didn't get no nothing but just closed down for a year. And then the the the situation happened so fast that, I mean, we it happened on the sixth.

We went to court on eleventh, had a hearing on the fourth, we closed down on the, thirteenth of this month. And all in thirty days, we've been open eight years, and we got shut down for a year and thirty days. I mean, that's that's harsh. You know what I'm saying? So I just like to point out that a lot of other businesses have a lot they just said Walgreens got a 149 violations.

I mean, police reports, incident reports, and they they on the news, they said that, basically, the police is willing to help them, but they got a 149 in one year. We got 15 in four years, but we get to them for treatment. We got other bars had McDonald's had a shooting, a death in there. Never nothing happened. We got a gas station.

It's I mean, it's just like every business is not fair, so I just wanna know, like, I just think that we got to put something in place, you know, to to kinda, you know, to make everything fair. You know what I'm saying? Just to, you know, is this not fair, like, far as the black bars versus, you know, I I don't want no business. I mean, it's not even black against whites or bars of that. It's just about a business. A business should be a business. It should be all the same, you know. So you should if one business gets shut down, other business should get shut down. So that's pretty much all I gotta say. Three minutes up.

Thank you, mister Law. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Williams.

One point, I mean, Zara Zara had reminded me several times, Zara Collins is here. Several times we've talked about this. There used to be, when Sandy Spain was here, there was an overnight economic economy committee where talked about several different things within that committee about the overnight situations or businesses especially with our downtown thriving, I think that that may with the chair of our regional growth committee may be a situation where we may want to bring that back to support businesses like this and businesses in the city in general when we talk about that, there is a large growing overnight economy with food trucks with and that involves the health department, they left, that involves lifts, you know things like that. So I would defer to my colleague to see if that is something that we could possibly discuss and talk about bringing back. Like I said, it was when Sandy was here, Sandy and Gretchen was here and they were leading that up.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you. Councilwoman McPherson.

Thank you councilman Hobbs and thank you Mr love for coming and taking the time to share with us. I am in support and will support councilwoman Morris in her endeavors to sit and meet and have this conversation. I wanna commend you also for doing all of the things that were asked of you and your bar during the time. You did what was asked of you. And so where we are not being insensitive to the loss of life that happened within that area close to your bar, you have no control of things that go on outside of your bar.

You had security there, you had police officers there, they were escorted out. Sheriffs. Sheriffs. Thank you, councilman. They were escorted out.

So there has to be fairness in everything and we've had this conversation, Councilwoman Morris and myself about this, because we have had bars downtown that have had several incidents. We have bars downtown that have had several racial incidents, and it was not publicized. So there needs to be regulation and fairness. I wanna thank all of the African American bar owners for what you do in trying to see that your establishment is safe, and that the persons that come and celebrate and share are feeling safe. I have visited each and every one of your bars, I'm looking back there to see who it is.

Yes. I intentionally go and visit and see what's going on because I feel that it is a part of my job as a representative and a servant of the city of Toledo. So I commend you all for sticking together and supporting one another And counsel will look into this and I am a supporter of you, mister Love, and the agenda bar. Thank you.

Councilman Meldoon.

Thank you, Chair. I just want to respond quickly to my colleague, Councilwoman Williams' comments. So as the Chair of the small business, it's a regional regional growth, small business economic development committee, it's too many words. I would be more than happy to kind of hold a committee hearing and think about reviewing how do we interact, how do we think about this. It's interesting as I'm listening to this conversation, I think about all the work that we go into around budget time with our white box facade work and all of our small business activation. We always say small business is economic development. We always say that. This feels like an opportunity to just make it make sense. Mr. Love, I heard your words very, very clearly.

This is true of a Walgreens and this is true of a McDonald's. So, I think that's an interesting conversation to have and we should have it. If not here, I don't know where that conversation goes. So, as the committee chair, I'd be more than happy to host if that's helpful. Maybe that conversation happens somewhere else, but I'll do whatever I can. Thanks.

Councilwoman Williams.

I I do wanna, I wanna be clear because, you know, a lot of times we get touted as we are treating this as anything to do with the police. The police are not the bad guys in this situation. And I wanna make sure that we make that clear. They are our allies. They always have been.

They enforce the laws that they are given. Yes. I thanked chief Trinley first of all, chief Trinley and assistant chief Braun been sitting here this whole time listening to all of this conversation. The fire even left and I thought they were gonna hang out longer than them so but I appreciate chief and assistant chief because they always show up for us and that and that's what I want to make it clear, the police are enforcing the laws that are given to them and we have to make sure we understand that. Directors are given to the police in the form of laws and they execute them.

Sometimes you have people that intervene with those laws and make it harder for the police to do them their jobs. So I wanna make sure we make that clear, this is an issue, a systemic issue that we have to work on as a counsel with the administration. I am so adamant about making sure equality and equity is there because we already know what bar start with oh that is a mess and a whole lot of stuff going there, don't nobody else want to say it I am and So they still I'm just saying, we know the name and at the end of the day, I wanna make sure that every business in the city of Toledo feels heard and feels feels like we are a council that represents this city. I know we had a long night, but I'm glad that you guys were able to stay and talk. I'm glad chief and assistant chief were able to stay and listen, and we appreciate everyone here.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you and I would echo councilwoman Williams sentiments about the police. This is not a police issue, it's an equity issue, it's an issue that I would hope that some of the journalists in the room would look into at the different bars and the different violence that happens around the bars and in the bars. That they would look into that and see how they are still functioning and still operational and we if they're on the cert list, if they're off the cert list, I mean there's a lot of opportunity for our journalism friends to to look into this. And so I would hope, I would hope that you would look into that. And I just want to say thank you to Sean Love.

When I have talked with him on whatever issue, if it was parking, if it was issues with perhaps over serving that were, you know, alleged back in the day. Whether it was later hours, I mean, shortening the hours, whether it was increasing the admittance to the to the establishment. These are things that he did not have to do. Are these other bars doing that? I don't I don't know the answer to that.

I would guess no. But my point is that he worked with the city. These are the kinds of bars, these are the kinds of taverns, these are the kinds of establishment, small business owners we want in this city. So thank you Sean. Thank you for the citizens of Toledo. Thank you.

Councilwoman McPherson.

Ditto and I'm just gonna add this because I'm glad councilwoman Morris is putting the challenge to our news media because then also look at the circ list, look at when names got on the CERT list, look at specifically the agenda when it was not on and when it was added on. Within hours?

How does that

happen? So those are some things, yes, I am glad you brought that up. Let's look at some of our other taverns, downtown specifically, and let's look at what's happening. Let's look at some of our taverns on Sylvania. Let's look at some of our taverns within different districts other than District 4 and see what the reports are.

It would interesting to hear the stories and to hear the reports versus what you have heard and what the agenda has been accused of. Thank you, councilwoman Morris, for bringing that up.

Before I bring mister Steven Ross for a last comment, what I wanna say is is that the danger I hope you all will hear this. The danger in the quick fix or what we perceive as a quick fix or trying to put a band aid on something keeps us from addressing the real issue of violence that is taking place. And so if we have a violent weekend and a particular place is chosen and say, oh, we've solved it because that's where it most happened, then we miss the real issue or the issuance of the violence and how we have to address the violence that's taking place. And so that's what I don't want to happen to have any bar or any business seen as the quick fix or the band aid that is solving what's really going on because it's not closing any bar after a weekend like we had the fourth of July weekend under and when you have respectfully four sheriffs there, I mean, what better security can you have? And it didn't take place inside.

So I hope we can have a conversation about this because it could be any other business owner at any time. And I thank chief Braun I mean, thank deputy chief Braun and chief Tremly for being here. I again echo this is not a police issue. Please make sure you record. This is not a police issue. Mister Sean mister Steven Ross. What's that? I'm sorry. Mister David Ross. Mister David Ross. Sorry.

How you doing? It was a lot of things that I had to say, but you guys kinda already addressed them. We're fortunate to have a council that will address issues and hear the voice of the people. So shout out to y'all. But there's there's situations that we have to think about like there's homelessness in Toledo, it's a problem.

At the public libraries, homelessness affects the public libraries. Shutting down the public libraries will not resolve it. So we need to figure out how we need to work with these bar owners because clearly the courts did not look at these bar owners like businesses and that's what they deserve to treat them as businesses. When you look in the audience you see people who work at these businesses and they provide for their family with these businesses. So we have to treat it as such and sit down at the table and figure out how do we create resolutions because there's resolutions that are there.

And I think considering Chief and TPD to create a table where we can learn how to get these bars, the opportunity to project officers. Because right now a lot of them are denied. They have no clue why. There's no answers why. So having that conversation and creating a table where they can voice their opinions and figure out where they're being viewed a certain way by society so they can clear it up.

Know, just like Sean said, he hasn't he hasn't had too many fractions other than parking and and being viewed as a nuisance. Where it's a place where, Jeep workers commute from Detroit and they that's the only place they know where to go. It's people who go there for their mental health to it's a a family atmosphere and it's not being looked at it like that way. It's looked at as a nuisance and it's not fair for him not to be at the table to learn why he's being viewed that way. So I think that's, some conversations and I would love to help any way with creating as far as creating meetings or anything where, TPD and, the council or anyone can sit at the table and we can really, mediate a good conversation that it'd be a resolution. That's all.

Councilman Melden.

Thank you, chair. Do you mind if I go back to the Kratom issue?

No,

You surprised by that? Make sure. It's just a way to wrap up a lot of conversation. I'm really glad the last conversation popped up. That's what the I mean, we started with a lot of other topics. I just want to say that where do we go from here? We have We're still on our summer schedule. We have an agenda review after Labor Day. It's the day after Labor Day, which will be the second reading of the pieces as they are written right now. And they would be scheduled to be voted on the following Tuesday.

So that's just the calendar. Something strikes me about the conversation we had, and many of the people that spoke actually left, which I don't blame them, we're over three hours here. One of the things I'm committed to is figuring out a way to bring all of that energy together and focus it in one direction. One thing that's super interesting about this is almost everything everyone said about the creatum issue, I bet we agreed on 90% of it. And we just spent a whole lot of time talking about ALLEF, which is a big deal to a lot of people that spoke.

But I just want to point out that there are so many pieces of this conversation that happen at levels of government that are not sitting in this room. Now, it doesn't mean we're powerless. It doesn't mean we're voiceless. That's, of course, not true. But it does mean that I hope we can kind of chew gum and walk at the same time. We can handle the immediate problems here and look at bigger, long term, more systemic solutions. We have to be able to do both things. I'm not interested in working any other way, personally. So this body, my hunch is, will make some sort of a decision. I'm only one of 12 voices in that regard.

But beyond that, I hope that we're able to continue to work together on the long term. Someone made the comment tonight that we don't have you don't have four or five years to wait for the federal government to act. That's probably how long it would take to rally enough. But can we do something now and work for the long term? Can we do something in the short term and work for the long term? That's always how I think about things, and that's how I'm gonna continue to think about this. It doesn't mean we're always gonna agree, but it does mean that's how I'm thinking about this. So I just wanted to close with that. I thank everyone who spoke on this topic so much. Whether we agree or not, it doesn't in any way diminish the respect and value I have for your voice and your time being here, genuinely.

Because if we talked about 40 other issues facing our city, I bet we'd agree on most of them in terms of how do we run a city that helps everyone thrive. And then other things we disagree on. So thank you for being here, and thank you for lending your voice. I appreciate it. Chair, thanks for listening to all of my mic time, and thanks for running a great meeting.

To all of my fellow council members, thank you to Chief and Deputy Chief, to the doctors that are here today, to Mr. Matt Bell, to Mr. Sean Love, thank you all for being here today. This meeting is adjourned.