Nowhere has the nation’s emerging opiate drug crisis hit harder than Ohio. Senate Republicans recently worked collaboratively with the Ohio House and the governor’s administration to invest more than $1 billion in the fight against drug abuse and addiction, and our new budget builds on that commitment. Through legislative leadership, Ohio has cracked down on Fentanyl possession and drug trafficking. The Senate also passed tough, new limits on prescriptions for the treatment of acute pain, reducing opiate doses by 109 million over the coming year in hopes of further tightening the flow of these dangerous, addictive drugs. We also expanded access to the life-saving heroin antidote Naloxone, giving law enforcement, emergency personnel, homeless shelters, halfway houses, schools and treatment centers better access this life-saving treatment. The same bill adopts new procedures for registering pharmacy technicians, ensuring background checks and improved training standards on these frontline pharmaceutical positions. Unregistered pharmacy techs accounted for more than a third of all drug theft cases investigated by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy.