Pubdate: Fri, 12 Sep 2003
Source: Maui News, The (HI)
Contact:  2003 The Maui News
Website: http://www.mauinews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2259
Author: Matt Sedensky, The Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Note: To read about the "ice epidemic" in Hawaii, go to
http://www.mapinc.org/areas/Hawaii .

STATE'S SMALL TOWNS FACE A NEW PREDATOR

HANA -- The sounds of ukulele still dance off Hana's front porches. Softballs
still fly across its field. Families still have luau, still shop at the same
tiny general store, still cherish their Hawaiian culture. 

But time has not stood entirely still in this sleepy East Maui town a
three-hour drive down a twisting, narrow road from the county seat at Wailuku. 

Doors are being locked. Sons have been arrested. Drugs have seeped in. 

It began decades ago -- marijuana first, then cocaine. But when
methamphetamines began to transform this town of 700 people, life wasn't so
simple. 

''It's the first time I've seen fear'' in Hana, said Sue Cuffe-Sykos, the town
drug counselor. ''People are afraid of their own relatives.'' 

Crystal meth, or ''ice,'' has crept into small towns like Hana across Hawaii.
It's broken up families, cost jobs, ruined lives. 

Drugs are, per-

haps, expected in places like Honolulu, where more than 370,000 people crowd
into the state's urban center. But officials say they're just as common in
small-town Hawaii -- places like Kaunakakai and Lanai City on the small islands
of Molokai and Lanai. And places like Hana. 

The drive along Hana Highway -- dotted with scenic overlooks and gushing
waterfalls -- is the stuff of storybooks. It is a journey taken by some 800,000
tourists a year. At the end -- after more than 600 curves and 54 one-lane
bridges -- is a tiny, one-school town. 

It doesn't seem like the type of place where one would want to escape from
reality, an idyllic town on the rolling hills beneath the slopes of Haleakala.
But many do, by smoking, snorting or injecting meth. 

Ray Henderson, whose Ohana Makmae treatment center opened four years ago to
deal with the substance-abuse problem, says the impact of the drug --
particularly the small, icelike chunks of crystal meth that are smoked like
crack -- has been ''staggering.'' 

''You can just look down the street and point out the different houses where
you know people are using ice,'' said Sheila Agnitsch, 42, a lifelong resident. 

Some blame boredom for the drug's popularity in places like Hana; others credit
its ''cool'' quotient. Some say it's the deep pain Hawaiian communities have
harbored. 

For Mona Oliveira, it was the high she had searched for her entire life. 

It only took a couple of weeks for her to get hooked. It took just a few more
for her to crash. 

At least a half-dozen officers showed up at her door in Hana early one morning.
When it was over, both she and her 13-year-old daughter were handcuffed, and
her husband faced a 20-year prison sentence. 

''I just wanted to die,'' said Oliveira, 39, now clean for two years. ''I
promised myself that day -- I promised God, I promised my kids that I would
never go back to anything.'' 

There are no reliable statistics for the number of meth users in Hawaii or the
number in urban as compared with rural areas. 

But experts say the problem is just as prevalent -- if not more so -- in small
towns, especially among young people. 

A 2000 report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University found no major difference between urban and rural areas in
meth use by adults. But rural 12th-graders were 60 percent likelier to have
used meth than their peers in small metropolitan areas. 

Henderson said a 2001 survey of students from 6th grade up at Hana High and
Elementary School found 70 percent felt there was a substance-abuse problem in
their home. More disturbing, Henderson said, was that 75 percent of those young
people felt the behavior was normal. 

Even on Lanai, the least populous of Hawaii's main islands, police say ice is
their main focus, with a number of arrests this summer. 

''It's statewide -- all walks of life,'' said Keith Kamita, chief of the
state's Narcotics Enforcement Division. ''We're having problems everywhere --
Waikiki hotel rooms, sheds on the Big Island.'' 

Ice took over Hana so dramatically that many didn't know what was happening. 

''I always thought everyone was on some kind of crazy diet,'' said Agnitsch,
noting the drug's dramatic weight-loss effect. 

In towns like Hana -- where every face is a familiar one -- admitting you have
a drug problem can be particularly difficult. 

''Everybody knows,'' said Uilani Phillips-Tehiva, a Hana native who works at
Ohana Makamae. ''We just don't talk about it.'' 

When rural drug users choose -- or, more often, are forced -- to get treatment,
the geography presents hurdles, particularly in an island state. 

''It's the same situation as if you need medical attention,'' said state Sen.
J. Kalani English, a Democrat whose district includes Lanai, Molokai, and the
eastern part of Maui that includes Hana. ''We don't have facilities enough to
deal with a scrape.'' 

Oahu and Maui are the only islands with inpatient drug treatment programs. On
Maui, the facility is hours from rural points like Hana. 

''It's easier to get drugs than it is to get treatment,'' said Margaret Wansor,
the clinical supervisor at the Hina Mauka facility in Wailuku. 

Outpatient programs typically require multiple treatment sessions each week --
a commitment that can be daunting in poor, dirt-road towns with no public
transportation. 

''They can be lost in their own world way out in the boondocks long before
anyone comes to their assistance,'' said Anita Laviola, clinical director of
the Malama Recovery Center in Kahului. 

For years, hundreds of Hana residents turned out each August for a volleyball
match in which alumni from one graduating class battle alumni from another. Not
long ago, it was a three-day event that attracted up to 30 teams. This year,
just six teams played for a single day. 

''All those guys that are on ice today used to be on that volleyball court,''
said Agnitsch, a lifelong resident who has battled addiction herself. 

Crime statistics for Hana don't reflect the anguish many residents express.
Total property offenses for 2002 actually were down from 1998, and things like
falling trees, flash floods and cows on the loose still make up the bulk of
calls to the tiny Hana police station. 

But police say ice is an everyday issue. ''It's the focus of everything,'' said
Lt. Mollie Cameron, the commander of the Hana police precinct. ''It's at the
root of many of our major crimes.'' 

The mood in Hana these days is reflected in a warning sign posted over a fruit
stand on the town's edge that operates on the honor system. ''Due to a rash of
robberies,'' it says, two hidden video cameras record all transactions. 

There are signs drug abuse may be reaching its limits in Hana. Police are
getting more tips from fed-up residents.

The shame of seeking treatment for a drug problem is slowly diminishing.

Grandmothers are asking their adult children to get help. 

At a recent Narcotics Anonymous meeting on the prim lawn of St. Mary's Church,
two newcomers joined the small group whose words meshed with the sounds of cows
in the background. 

''We have the best chance of probably any community to lick this problem,''
said Henderson. ''Because of the isolation, we can choose if we want to say
this just won't be tolerated.'' 

Cuffe-Sykos, who battled her own addictions before becoming a drug counselor,
recently walked up to a well-known gathering place for ice users and tucked a
note in the door. 

''Our children can no longer play near your house,'' she wrote. ''They do not
understand why all our doors are now locked. Aunties and uncles have become
hollow strangers who no longer have time to watch out for them.

''We will not allow this drug to bring violence, pain and shame into our
lives.''
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