Speaking at the Chicago Council of Lawyers annual luncheon last month, Chicago Police Board President Lori Lightfoot noted that the onset of Illinois’ budget impasse in 2015 coincided with an escalation in Chicago’s violence. “Social service agencies had to drastically cut back their services,” she said. “They were robbed of their ability to do their work because of the foolishness in Springfield.”
Two weeks later, on Oct. 19, Gov. Bruce Rauner announced plans to cut $89 million from the state budget, which had been earmarked for social service providers. Family Shelter Service, where I work, was one of many Illinois domestic violence agencies that was especially devastated when they were left out of last year’s stopgap budget, causing shelters to close and services to be cut back.
Newly released statistics from the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence reveal that 61 people lost their lives to domestic violence in Illinois in FY-17. Five of those deaths took place in DuPage County in a span of six months.
Sen. Toi Hutchinson addressed the reality of what Rauner’s cuts to social service providers really means during remarks at the Chicago Foundation for Women’s Annual Symposium on Oct. 19. “Each one of these numbers on a spreadsheet is a life,” she said.
The fragile but effective social service fabric of Illinois — something which took decades to build — is gradually eroding. With violence in our streets, sexual violence in the news and violence in our neighbors’ homes, isn’t it everyone’s job to make sure that this safety net is always available?
Judie Caribeaux, Naperville
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Better way to fight drug addiction
On Thursday, op-ed writer Bradley Tusk became the latest commentator to remind us: Our “War On Drugs” is unwinnable as strategized. Our head-in-the-sand lawmakers are in denial about it, and haven’t budged. Supporters of said War on Drugs fret over kids’ access to drugs if it were ended, but if you hand $50 to most any city kid, he can return in 30 minutes with a drug-buy. The “war” is already lost.
A British blueprint for success was telecast on “60 Minutes” back in the ’90s, with host Ed Bradley narrating: Medical doctors there were empowered to issue eligibility I.D.s to diagnosed addicts who could then buy “fixes” dirt cheap from any pharmacy, supplied under government supervision, just like other controlled drugs. This would assure unadulterated narcotics and, consequenlty, fewer overdoses.
Thus addicts had access to maintenance-level doses enabling them to function at near-normal without committing crimes to pay for street drugs at prices inflated by their illegality. That plan or an alternative could put drug kingpins and street dealers out of business instantly. Goodbye, shootings from gang turf wars. Prison populations would shrink.
If there’s a “gateway drug,” it’s not marijuana; it’s opioids from Big Pharma prescribed under names like Vicodin or Oxycontin, now wreaking a public health crisis.
Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park
ISIS just a boogie man
In Thursday’s Sun-Times, the always-reliable S.E. Cupp tried to spook us with one of conservatives’ favorite boogie men, ISIS. Of course, Chicago still will have more murders than New York has this week. And we would need eight more attacks like the one that took place on Tuesday in New York to match the number of deaths in the Las Vegas shooting a few weeks ago.
The real terror in America isn’t ISIS but GUNS.
Don Anderson, Oak Park
