DeWine was interviewed Monday by Larry Hansgen on AM 1290 and News 95.7 WHIO.
DeWine, 70, said he has worked on many issues as attorney general but as governor, "I can get ahead of some of this stuff, for example the drug problem."
Students from kindergarten through high school need age-appropriate education on the dangers of drugs, he said.
DeWine said he wants expanded paths to jobs such as skills training that includes more mentoring and apprenticeships. He said such steps would help alleviate the chief complaints he hears from employers: Applicants who can’t pass a drug tests and those not possessing requisite skills.
“What we have to do is marry up with our great two-year institutions such as Sinclair, for example, along with our career centers in high school and get them integrated even more than they already are with business so people can come out after two years or after high school and have the opportunity to go directly into a job and make a good middle-class wage.”
DeWine, of Cedarville, noted that more than 100 years has passed since a candidate from the Miami Valley was elected governor.
“We think it’s about time,” he said.
Gov. James M. Cox, founder of the Dayton Daily News, was elected in 1916 to serve a second term beginning in 1917.
At least three candidates with deep Miami Valley ties are now in the 2018 running. Democrat Nan Whaley, Dayton's current mayor, earned degrees at both the University of Dayton and Wright State University before elected to the city commission in 2005. Current Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted graduated from the University of Dayton and lived in Kettering before moving to the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.
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