MADIGAN: METH, KIDS DON'T MIX

Attorney General, Local Lawmakers Team To Double Penalties

PEORIA - Responsible parents shudder at the thought of their children
coming into contact with household cleaning products that can burn, poison
and even kill.

It's "an absolute nightmare," however, to think of a child toddling through
a kitchen or sitting in a car where ingredients for the powerful, illegal
drug methamphetamine are mixed or stored, the state's top law enforcer said
Monday.

Yet, "Tragically, it happens here in Illinois - and it happens too often,"
said Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

It's happened several times recently in Bartonville, village police Chief
Brian Fengel said.

But if Madigan and the state lawmakers she's recruiting to her cause push
legislation through the General Assembly this spring, anyone who subjects
children to the dangers of meth after July 1 will receive prison terms
twice as long as they otherwise would.

Madigan was joined by Chief Fengel, state Sen. George Shadid, D-Peoria, and
state Rep. Ricca Slone, D-Peoria Heights, at a news conference at Greater
Peoria Regional Airport to announce their support of a bill to double
punishments for making meth in the presence of or in ways that endanger
children.

State law currently carries prison terms of three to 60 years for crimes
related to methamphetamine, a controlled substance, Madigan said. Convicted
meth makers would face prison terms of six to 120 years under the proposal.

"Cooking meth around children is a recipe for disaster," Madigan said.

The possible ingredients - anhydrous ammonia, lithium metal, red phosphorus
and hypophosphorus acid, to name a few - are highly dangerous alone but,
overheated or mixed incorrectly, they can catch fire or explode, as a meth
lab did last month in a Pekin apartment.

Those who mix the toxic brews that produce the crystal-like powder or
liquid are no longer limited to fringe-type groups such as motorcycle
gangs, Bartonville's Fengel said.

Adults both young and old - the "middle class," he said - are using meth in
increasing numbers locally. One man Fengel's officers recently arrested
"had been up for 30 days without sleep," he said.

Madigan recalled a U.S. Justice Department report that children have been
present in about 35 percent of locations, including homes and vehicles,
where meth labs have been found.

If nothing else, the proposed increased penalties will alert both meth
users and the public that law enforcers statewide recognize the growing
presence of the highly addictive drug in the state and the dangers it
carries, Madigan said.

She also will support a bill calling for convicted meth makers to pay the
cost to clean their illegal laboratories of the chemicals, which Madigan
said effectively create a toxic waste site. That cost can be as high as
$10,000, she said.