Republican bills aim to assist Illinois in its battle against fentanyl
[March 08, 2025]
By Jade Aubrey and UIS Public Affairs Reporting (PAR)
Illinois Republican senators have filed bills that would combat the
state’s fentanyl crisis and further punish major possessors of the drug.
One bill would reclassify a fentanyl overdose as a “poison,” while
another would consider major fentanyl possessors a threat to public
safety.
According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, Illinois
experienced 3,261 fatal opioid-related drug overdoses in 2022, and 2,855
in 2023.“
There’s not one simple area that it affects. It’s everyone,” Sen. Sally
Turner, R-Beason, said. “If you don’t know someone that’s been tainted
with fentanyl, you will.”
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that can be up to 50 times stronger than
heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. The Center for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) says fentanyl accounts for a major portion
of all fatal and nonfatal overdoses in the U.S.
It’s usually added to other types of drugs to increase potency, making
the laced- drug cheaper, more powerful, addictive and dangerous.
Turner and Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, announced their sponsorship of the
four fentanyl-related bills during a news conference with McLean County
Coroner Kathleen Yoder in the Statehouse on Thursday.
“The vast majority of time in these deaths, fentanyl is not something
someone chooses to use intentionally,” Rezin said. “It’s something they
take when it’s laced in other pills or products. Families are losing
loved ones, not because of addiction, because they are unknowingly being
poisoned right now.”
Rezin championed Senate Bill 1283, which would change the official
language of IDPH for a fentanyl-related death from an “overdose” to a
“poisoning.”
“When we treat fentanyl deaths as overdoses, we minimize the impact that
this drug has on the victims,” Rezin said. “As legislators, it’s our
responsibility to ensure that people who die from this poison are
recognized as victims, not just another overdose statistic.”
Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, said in an interview he is supportive of
Rezin’s bill and is filing and sponsoring a duplicate bill in the House.
Rezin is also pushing Senate Bill 113, which would require someone
charged with handling 15 grams or more of substances containing fentanyl
to prove that they do not pose a threat to public safety to be granted
pretrial release.
“This shifts the burden away from prosecutors and judges and makes clear
that the safety of our communities come first,” she said.
Neither of Rezin’s bills have been assigned to a committee, however,
Ford said he agreed with Rezin that such people are a threat to public
safety and planned to talk with the senators further about the bill. His
main concern is if judges can already do this under the Safe-T Act.
[to top of second column]
|
Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, talks about her fentanyl-related
legislation at a news conference in the Capitol on Thursday.
(Capitol News Illinois photo by Jade Aubrey)
Will Narcan continue to be the solution?
Naloxone – often referred to as its brand name, Narcan – is an
over-the-counter medication as either a nasal spray or injection, and
often is used to reverse opioid overdoses.
In 2010, Illinois passed the Good Samaritan Law, which allows
non-medical personnel to administer Narcan to a person experiencing an
opioid or heroin overdose. The law’s enactment led to the creation of
the Drug Overdose and Prevention Program, which enabled the Illinois
Department of Human Services to provide organizations with Narcan, for
free, to be dispersed within communities in the state.
A CDC report from late 2024 disclosed that, like Illinois,
fentanyl-related overdose deaths decreased from 2022 to 2023 – the first
nation-wide decrease since 2018.
On Thursday, the Pritzker Administration released a statement that
reported an 8.3% decrease in total drug overdose deaths in Illinois in
2023. Synthetic opioid-related deaths also dropped by 9.5%.
The statement noted that “several factors likely contributed to this
decline, including sustained efforts to increase naloxone distribution
throughout the state.”
“What this tells me is that Narcan works and that it saves lives,” Ford
said. “That’s why we have to make sure that we do everything we can to
get Narcan out there.”
But Turner and Rezin weren’t so optimistic.
“I mean, great, we’ve had a decrease in fentanyl deaths,” Rezin said.
“But considering where we want to, where we need to be, we’re nowhere
near being able to take a victory lap.”
Yoder, the McLean County coroner, reported that fentanyl has recently
been mixed with new substances, like benzodiazepine and xylazine, often
called tranq. These are substances that Narcan can’t reverse.
Turner agreed.
“Yoder mentioned that now there’s different forms of fentanyl that are
coming out,” she said. “I think we’re going to see more death because of
Narcan doesn’t work on everything. I think she’s told us that maybe
we’re going to see that in the future.”
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. |
