TOUGHER DESIGNER-DRUG PENALTIES URGED

Lake County Authorities Petition Lawmakers

Few things are more frustrating to undercover drug-enforcement police
officers than watching suspected drug dealers walk out of jail only
hours after being arrested.

That recently happened in Lake County, where a lengthy investigation
led to the arrest of a man suspected of selling Ecstasy, a so-called
designer drug linked to at least three deaths in the Chicago area.

"It made us all mad," said Master Sgt. Terry Lemming of the
Metropolitan Enforcement Group of Lake County, which investigates drug
crimes in the far north suburbs.

"The drug is so new the judiciary may not understand the dangers of
it," Lemming said Thursday after testifying before a panel of state
lawmakers in Deerfield.

The Illinois House Republican Task Force on Designer Drugs was formed
last spring in response to warnings from law-enforcement authorities
that Ecstasy was beginning to show up in Illinois.

"We call it the `kill pill,'" said Lemming, who was among a group of
Lake County law-enforcement officials who told the lawmakers that
increasing the penalties for possession of Ecstasy and other designer
drugs could help slow its distribution in Illinois.

"One reason people deal the drug is they know the penalties are
lower," Lemming said.

Rep. Tom Cross (R-Oswego), the task force chairman and an assistant
minority leader in the House, said the need to increase penalties for
the possession and distribution of designer drugs has been the
resounding theme of a series of public hearings the task force has
held this summer.

"We've learned that one of the big problems is the level of the
penalties," he said.

Higher penalties would result in higher bonds, making it more
difficult for suspects to get out of jail.

The sale of 15 doses of LSD carries a 6-year prison term.

But someone would have to sell about 900 doses--or about 200 grams--of
Ecstasy to face the same sentence.

James Simonian, a prosecutor in the Lake County state's attorney's
office, testified that lawmakers should consider using the number of
units of Ecstasy, rather than weight, to set penalty standards.

"Instead of worrying about weight, do it by the number of pills,"
Simonian said. "Our current laws don't deal with the situation that's
coming in."

Ecstasy, also called the "hug drug" because of its ability to heighten
physical sensations, is an amphetamine that can produce
hallucinations.

Large shipments of the drug have been linked to underground
laboratories in Holland, but it also is being produced illegally in
the United States as it increases in popularity, particularly among
teenagers, Lemming said.

The fact that it is produced in clandestine labs is one reason the
drug is so dangerous.

"Users never know what they're getting," Lemming said.

Lake County Coroner Barbara Richardson said that although her office
has seen many victims of cocaine overdoses, she has not yet dealt with
an Ecstasy victim.

But just watching a video supplied by law-enforcement authorities
about designer drugs disturbed her.

"This really frightens me," she said. "We're just really lucky we're
one of the counties that hasn't been hurt by this."

Lemming warned that it could just be a matter of time before a young
person dies from using Ecstasy or another designer drug such as GHB,
also known as the "date-rape drug." The drugs have been linked to
heart failures and seizures.

"If you think it's not a problem here in Lake County, it is," he said.