If you ask me, Illinois’s current drug policies are flawed. They’re ineffective, out of date and not well targeted. The system does little prevent drug use doesn’t treat the disease of substance abuse, and basically only throws money at the problems.

Drug policy expert Kathleen Kane-Willis agrees. She led a discussion on the issue Monday at Swift Hall, sponsored by Northwestern NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a group that I’m a member of).

Illinois has an enormous drug problem, said Kane-Willis, who is the associate director of The Institute for Metropolitan Affairs and is the co-founder of The Illinois Consortium on Drug Policy (pdf).

“Illinois is second in the nation behind California for the most incarcerated drug offenders,” Kane-Willis said. “The state spends $280 million per year to combat drugs.”

However, that investment has not been very successful.

“Chicago has the third lowest price for heroin, cocaine that is 60 to 70 percent pure with the price continuing to decline, and extremely low prices for amphetamines,” Kane-Willis said.

The policies are failing: More people are being arrested for possession than for sales.

“In 1993, 68 percent of drug offenders were dealers, as opposed to 31 percent for possession,” Kane-Willis said. “In 2002, 45 percent of offenses were sales and 54% were possession.”

Law enforcers are targeting the wrong people and should be focusing on the source of the drug problem, she said.

Furthermore, the prison system is faulty as it is simply a haven for further criminal education and doesn’t provide treatment for the convicts’ drug problems.

“Of the 1.2 million convicts with a substance abuse problem only ten percent receive any treatment,” Kane-Willis said. “Treatment programs are much more cost-efficient. With only $2.3 million spent on drug treatment programs, $40 million could be saved by cutting prison costs and in the process increasing the number of taxpayers.”

Moreover, the current prison system does not provide released offenders with any sort of assistance.

“All they are given is ten dollars and a bus ticket back into the city,” Kane-Willis said. The lack of assistance makes it more likely that a released prisoner will commit a second offense and possibly return to prison.

Kane-Willis proposed to increase the amount of drug treatment, create diversion programs and increase the services for released offenders. Additionally, Kane-Willis stressed the ineffectiveness of our drug education programs.

“DARE didn’t work,” she said. “There is a reason that they pulled its funding. The ‘just say no’ policy just doesn’t work. In 2005, 40 percent of kids said they used, bought, or were offered drugs at school”.

The key period for drug education is later in junior-high and high school anyway, she said.

“56% of heroin users, 72% of meth users and 65% of cocaine users reported there first use before the age of 18,” she said.

To improve the drug education system she suggested stressing the discussion of drugs effects, continuing drug education into junior-high and high school and supplying students with more accurate information.

Kane-Willis also discussed the possibly reasons for racial discrepancies in drug convictions. Whites and suburbians use drugs more frequently and at younger ages than minorities and urban populations. Yet the majority of convictions are minorities and urban dwellers. She gave several explanations for this.

“There definitely is racism in our justice system,” she said. “[For instance,] judges increase penalties for not making bail. That hurts lower income offenders”.

Also, she discussed the fact that drug activity occurs much more often inside homes in the suburbs.

Finally, Kane-Willis discussed the idea that drug use is a social issue, not a moral issue. It impacts many facets of life that people don’t always realize: economics, housing, employment, education, health care, race, age, gender, families and the entire community. For instance, 85 percent of incarcerated women are mothers, making it very difficult for them to support their family.

I definitely have to agree with her that Illinois’s drug policies have many problems. But still, as she said, “drug use is and should be a serious public health issue.”