Users of date-rape drugs could face stiffer penalties if the House approves a bill already passed in the Senate that makes drugging a person without his or her consent aggravated battery and subsequent rape an aggravated criminal sexual assault.

Senate Bill 1224, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Dave Luechtefeld, R-Okawville, and Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale, comes on the heels of a widely publicized incident at Northern Illinois University where three students were indicted in December for the possession, sale and trafficking of the date-rape drug GHB, or gamma hydroxybutyrate.

Following the indictment, Attorney General Jim Ryan spearheaded a statewide effort to combat the use of date-rape drugs, calling for an emergency summit in Springfield Jan. 26. The meeting was aimed at gauging the extent of the problem while brainstorming potential solutions.

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Ryan spokesman Charles Jolie said the summit served as an important vehicle for gathering information from law enforcement officials, policy experts, school administrators and concerned citizens. Hailed as a success, the summit spurred lawmakers to consider the date-rape-drug phenomena and craft legislation to deal with it.

Prompted by citizen response and pressure from the Attorney General’s Office, Luechtefeld and Dillard drafted SB 1224 to tackle the criminal side of the problem. The bill would make the drugging of a person aggravated battery, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, and the use of the drug in rape a criminal sexual assault, punishable by 6 to 30 years.

It’s a make-sense bill, Jolie said in response to the bill’s upgrading of penalties.

In addition to stepping up punishment for those who administer date-rape drugs, the legislation also aims to make potential victims aware of these drugs and the machinations behind them. The more information the public has at its disposal, the quicker the response, Dillard said.

To combat the increasing number of newly manufactured drugs not yet outlawed by the state, the bill would punish the use of any drug in sexual assault. Dillard said this is an important line in the bill, which makes it easier to prosecute date-rape-drug cases where offshoots of the illegal GHB and Rohypnol are used.

These perpetrators are wily, Dillard said. They’ll just skirt the law and make other drugs similar to GHB and Rohypnol. So this is a blanket ban.

Luechtefeld contends the bill is long overdue and injects consistency into the sentencing of those convicted of sexual assault. The bill, he said, makes using a drug to commit rape as felonious as using a gun or knife.

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SB 1224 passed the Senate Tuesday and entered the House Wednesday. The House version will be sponsored by Rep. John Fritche, D-Chicago, and must be acted upon by the end of May.

This is a solid piece of legislation, Dillard said. Sometimes college students don’t take things very seriously. This is something they should take very seriously. It says if you’re going to use a date-rape drug to rape somebody, you’re going to do hard, hard time. This is no joking matter.