SPRINGFIELD — Youth advocates against substance abuse swarmed the Capitol this week, navigating their way into lawmakers’ offices, sharing their experiences in school and addressing what they viewed as gaps in Illinois’ drug and alcohol regulations.

Brought together by the Illinois Prevention Network – a coalition of organizations working to create safe, healthy and drug-free communities in Illinois – high schoolers canvassed the Capitol on Wednesday in support of bills aimed at reducing and regulating substance use throughout Illinois.

“Many kids, myself included, often feel as though we don’t have much power to do things and change things in the world,” Amber Diepenbrock, 14, of Wredling Middle School in St. Charles, said. “I’m here because I want to be able to represent kids my age more and talk about the problems I’m seeing in my own school.”

Kratom regulation

Kratom is a plant that’s used as a stimulant and opioid substitute. Currently, it is only regulated by the 2014 Kratom Control Act, which makes it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to purchase the substance. Five bills currently in House committees seek to amend or replace the act.

Kratom acts as a stimulant, but can also act as a cardiac or a respiratory depressant, similar to opioid. The drug is not Food and Drug Administration approved, with the organization warning consumers against its use because of the risk of serious adverse effects, including seizures, drug-induced liver injuries and substance-use disorder. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found salmonella contamination in kratom products. The FDA said it is often used “to self-treat conditions such as pain, coughing, diarrhea, anxiety and depression, opioid use disorder, and opioid withdrawal.”

House Bill 1303 and House Bill 3127 seek to raise the age restriction to 21 and prohibit child-attractive products while imposing a 5% retail tax. House Bill 3215 would create a registration and labeling system for kratom products.

House Bill 3129 would add kratom’s active compounds as Schedule III controlled substances and repeal the existing Kratom Control Act. It would essentially ban the substance in Illinois with the exception of some medical uses. Another bill, House Bill 4930, would take the hardest line, prohibiting the distribution, manufacture and sale of kratom entirely unless they have been approved by the FDA. All five were referred to the House Rules Committee in March, 2025, meaning they all have a long way to go legislatively.

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Senate Bill 1570, which is also awaiting a committee assignment, would effectively ban kratom for all individuals, regardless of age.

Rep. Bill Hauter, R-Morton, citing six kratom-related deaths in Tazewell County in 2023, said there is a need to regulate the drug, but he emphasized a complete ban would be more effective.

“Nobody really knows (how it works), so it has to be regulated,” Hauter, who is a physician, said. “More and more, municipalities are just saying to ban it completely. It’s so easily available, and it’s hard to regulate it, so they’re just banning it totally so nobody can have it unless they go to a municipality where they can buy it.”

Yana Malpani, a 17-year-old senior at Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, who is also president of its Catalyst substance prevention program, said that she has observed excessive use of both unregulated cannabis derivatives and kratom among teenagers.

“This is because it’s so accessible at gas stations, feed shops and convenience stores, anyone can technically go and purchase it without realizing,” Malpani said.

A lot of kratom products, such as candy and vapes, are marketed with bright colors, enticing teenagers to purchase them.

“Kratom and delta-8 are being marketed as products that look identical to candies,” Malpani said. “We aren’t able to tell if it is candy or not unless you really look at the fine print.”

Lowering the legal blood-alcohol content limit

The group also pushed for House Bill 4333, which aims to lower the legal blood-alcohol content limit from 0.08 to 0.05 for DUIs. The bill is awaiting a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee.

Fifteen percent of alcohol-related deaths happen to drivers with a BAC less than 0.08, and crash risks are seven times higher for those testing at 0.05 than sober driving, according to a Boston Medical Center study.

“Right now, if your blood alcohol content is at 0.08, you’ll get a DUI,” Malpani said. “The problem is at 0.06, you become legally and physically impaired to drive. But right now, I can be at 0.06 and get behind the wheel.”

Utah experienced a 19.8% drop in fatal crashes in one year after lowering the BAC to 0.05 in 2018, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Youth advocacy for drug and alcohol abuse prevention

Diepenbrock emphasized that although she and other students are unable to vote, their voice plays an important role in the push to regulate drug and alcohol use among youth. She said she’s seen students pass vapes and other substances around in her school and the impact it has on teenagers.

“When you actually try and look deeper into it, you can see the effects and how it impacts not only an adult, but also a child,” Diepenbrock said. “A child may not get their hands on a drug, but their parents may, and that can heavily impact them.”

Hauter said that it is important to include the youth in the drafting of such legislation to raise awareness for the effects of drug usage.

“I think it’s time that Illinois took this seriously,” Hauter said. “I can’t believe it’s taken this long, because, you know, this is one of those things that we need to address.”

How drug and alcohol-use policy affects teenagers is often left out of legislation, Malpani said, failing to address a major contributor to underage DUIs. In 2024, 245 drivers in Illinois under the age of 21 lost their license due to drug and alcohol use while driving, according to a report by the secretary of state’s office.

Illinois State Police report that drivers under age 21 represent 10% of licensed drivers but are involved in 17% of alcohol-related fatal crashes and that crashes are a leading cause of death for teens.

“I think a lot of times policy around substance-use prevention is drafted by adults who don’t have a full understanding of how the policy affects their teens and high schoolers,” Malpani said. “So right now, I think having youth draft the policy themselves is so much more beneficial because we know how it affects us.”

Georgia Epiphaniou and Jacques Abou-Rizk are graduate students in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and fellows in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.

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.