Sometimes the little changes require a little background explanation. Sometimes all they need is a little amplification to get across the point of why a change is desired.

This is an example of the latter — it doesn’t need much explanation or even a defense. We’re all for it.

Last week, Butler City Council amended the city code to alter its definition of a nuisance property.

For any resident who cares to look it up, the original wording of the code was still online on Monday on the city’s website. Here’s how it reads:

“Any place within the City where persons congregate, gather or abide for any licentious or unlawful purposes, or where persons of known bad habits or reputation are permitted or allowed to congregate, gather or remain, or where any unlawful or licentious act is committed with the consent or knowledge of the owner, proprietor or person in charge, whether the place is public or private and whether the unlawful or licentious act is committed in a building, in the open or on any lot or land in the City. All such places are hereby declared to be a public nuisance. “Disorderly house” includes all places where licentiousness or prostitution is practiced or where gambling is permitted or carried on or where intoxicating liquors are kept or dispensed illegally.”

The ordinance that council adopted last week alters the final sentence of this section of the code. Now a disorderly house will be defined thusly (with new verbiage in italics for emphasis):

“‘Disorderly house’ includes all places where licentiousness or prostitution is practiced or where gambling is permitted or carried on or where intoxicating liquors are kept or dispensed illegally, where illegal drugs are kept, grown, manufactured, dispensed, sold or used or, where other illegal activities are permitted.”

On its face, the added sentence does not change much. But its essence make very clear that the city intends to hold someone responsible for illegal drug activity on private residential properties within the city — if not the tenant, then the landlord.

This editorial is not intended to pick a side or argue the merits of any new policy or its outcomes. It is only to amplify the city’s action so that nobody can pretend they were not notified or made aware of an attempt by the city to increase an awareness of property responsibility commensurate with our perception of property rights — as in, you make a mess, you clean it up. And that goes for your tenants and their guests, too.

Some landlords might object to such constraints. That’s not the way things have been done here in the past, they might argue.

True. But in the past we haven’t had 92 drug overdose deaths in Butler County in one year, with the number beginning to climb again this year, though not nearly as quickly as in 2017. Increased drug activity and drug addiction go hand-in-hand with increases in other crimes, and criminals in the throes of addiction can’t be held responsible for much of anything.

So, follow this sole remaining thread of inductive logic: If the drug user is beyond responsibility for his or her own actions, then the individual who provides a home for the drug user should be held responsible. That might be a parent, spouse or landlord.

Turn them in? Well, no. But we are a codependent bunch if we aren’t getting help for addicted friends and loved ones.

Treatment is the prescribed remedy for drug addiction. Harboring addicted people in your home is not. The amended ordinance gives strong emphasis to a point we wanted badly to assume that everyone already knew, but apparently could not.