Pubdate: Sun, 02 Dec 2007
Source: Honolulu Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2007 The Honolulu Advertiser, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Contact:  http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/195
Author: Kevin Dayton
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

BIG ISLAND WINNING METH 'WAR'

HILO, Hawai'i - It has been almost seven years since  Big Island Mayor
Harry Kim declared "war" on crystal  methamphetamine, a pronouncement
that helped launch a  political movement that led county, state and
federal  governments to spend millions of dollars on anti-meth
initiatives.

Much of that money was aimed at solving the problem on  the Big
Island, and the island's efforts are sometimes  cited as a model for
other communities. More than $9  million in federal funds alone was
directed at the meth  problem on that island.

Today police, prosecutors, drug treatment providers and  others say
meth use on the Big Island hasn't gone away,  but significant progress
has been made.

Police have made 895 meth-related arrests for  possession, trafficking
or paraphernalia this year, the  highest number in the past five
years, according to  statistics provided by police Lt. Samuel Jelsma,
head  of the Hilo vice section.

However, Jelsma said that while arrests are up, the  amounts of drugs
seized by police has declined  dramatically from four or five years
ago, suggesting  there is less meth circulating at street level.

If the price tag for that progress sounds expensive for  a community
of less than 175,000 people, that's because  the problem was neglected
for so long, said Billy  Kenoi, Kim's executive assistant and the
leader of the  county-level effort to combat the ice problem.

When the money was divided up among enforcement,  treatment and
education programs as part of a  comprehensive anti-drug strategy,
"all of a sudden,  you're scrambling for dollars," Kenoi said. "It
seems  like a lot, but you've got to remember what we're  trying to
accomplish."

MULTI-PRONGED EFFORT

Former U.S. Rep. Ed Case once remarked that the federal  government
was spending more per capita to combat meth  in Hawai'i than it was
offering to any other state in  the nation, and the Big Island was the
beneficiary of  much of that federal spending.

Treatment programs were expanded across the island, and  the size of
the police vice division was more than  doubled by creating
five-member meth task forces for  both East and West Hawai'i.

A new police lab was set up to more rapidly process  drug cases, and
Drug Court programs were established in  Hilo and Kona where none had
existed before.

Adolescent residential drug treatment programs for boys  and girls
were created from scratch on the Big Island,  along with a new live-in
program for people with the  dual diagnoses of mental illness and
addiction, and a  new drug treatment aftercare program for Native
Hawaiian men.

Hundreds of small grants were distributed for  community-based
projects designed to have an impact on  the ice problem, with many
thousands of dollars  distributed for everything from culinary classes
to  workshops on how to make an 'ukulele, with each project  required
to include an anti-drug component.

That rush of activity has made a difference, observers
said.

Police Capt. Marshall Kanehailua said the proof that  progress has
been made is that meth is no longer a hot  political topic on the island.

"At one point, that was all you heard, everyone was on  the bandwagon,
ice was it, it was a topic of  conversation no matter where you went,"
said  Kanehailua, who headed the vice division's East Hawai'i  Ice
Task Force from 2003 to 2005. "Now, you don't hear  it as much, and
that's a good thing. Did we solve the  problem? Absolutely not, but I
think we've made headway  in reducing the problem."

MEASURING SUCCESS

Gauging exactly how much has been accomplished is  difficult because
of the nature of some of the programs  that were funded. Advocates
point to programs and  activities that were established with the money
that  flowed into the Big Island, but proving they were  successful at
stopping or preventing someone's ice use  is more difficult.

Prevention and education programs in particular are  designed to
divert youths away from drugs, and it is  impossible to accurately
count how many youngsters  never smoke ice because they were too
engrossed in  other activities such as a publicly funded basketball
league.

The most obvious initiative that can claim tangible  success is the
law enforcement crackdown, which nearly  everyone agrees had an impact.

Deputy County Prosecutor Jason Skier points to a  13-month
investigation known as Operation Capsize that  used federal wiretaps
to build cases against three  entrenched methamphetamine smuggling and
distribution  rings on the Big Island.

Police served 50 search warrants and made more than 50  arrests that
resulted in 27 federal indictments during  the operation in 2004 and
2005.

Kanehailua, who was deeply involved in the operation,  said police
seized 27 pounds of ice during Operation  Capsize along with more than
$1 million in cash, and  police are still following threads from the
investigation to make more drug cases.

Six to nine months after the raids from Operation  Capsize, Skier said
the price of methamphetamine on the  Big Island had doubled, a sign
that the drug was  becoming more scarce.

Kanehailua believes even meth distributors who were not  swept up in
the operation are wondering whether police  have identified them and
are watching, creating an  atmosphere that may have pressured some to
get out of  the ice business.

After the operation, calls to the "ice hotline" to  report drug houses
plummeted from 30 to 40 a month to  almost zero, and Kanehailua said
that success by Big  Island police coincided with an apparent national
drop  in meth production that may have helped to suppress the  local
problem.

PERSISTENT PROBLEMS

That doesn't mean meth use disappeared, however.

Kenoi, who has resigned from the Kim administration to  run for Big
Island mayor, has been an outspoken  advocate for a strategy that
involved more than a  police crackdown.

The effort on the Big Island was designed to include  drug treatment
programs, anti-drug education and other  prevention programs, and
Kenoi said government could  easily have spent five times what it did
to cope with  the meth problem.

If it costs $300 per day for an adolescent treatment  bed, and perhaps
200 youths need that level of  treatment each year, simply treating
juveniles on ice  can quickly consume millions of dollars, he said.

In fact, every drug treatment program on the island  received money to
increase capacity, and more money was  spent to train and certify drug
treatment counselors so  the programs had the staff they needed to
accept more  clients, Kenoi said.

Marilyn McIntosh, director of behavioral health for Big  Island
Substance Abuse Council in West Hawai'i, said  her own program has
tripled in size, and "we see very  few on the wait list."

"We're getting what we need. Of course we could always  use more, but
we're making a dent, and so you know that  it's working," she said.

Meth admissions are still high, but many BISAC clients  report they
have been seeing fewer of their old  drug-using friends on the street,
with many of their  old associates going into treatment, into jail or
dying, McIntosh said.

"I think it's cut down. With everyone working toward a  common goal,
we're seeing less of it," she said.

In the area of prevention programs, "what we're doing  is ensuring
that we have a healthy, safe Hawai'i  Island, and if we want to do
that, yes, it's  enforcement, yes, it's treatment, but most
importantly  it's focusing on our children," Kenoi said.

Meth money was used to help the Boys and Girls Club of  the Big Island
to open satellite facilities in rural  areas such as Kea'au, Ka'u,
Hamakua and Pahoa, and to  finance programs in Kona as well, Kenoi
said.

Hundreds of small grants under the "Healing Our Island"  program have
been distributed to grassroots  organizations that include anti-drug
components in  their projects for youth. Again, observers believe
progress is being made.

CHANGING ATTITUDES

Jan Sears, co-coordinator with the North Hawaii Drug  Free Coalition,
said the tone and focus of gatherings  and conferences among people
working on the meth issue  has shifted in recent years.

"We've come up with a shift in our basic focus to now  look at how we
can create and maintain healthy  communities, and not so much how do
we fight crystal  methamphetamine," she said. "We've grown out of a
one-drug issue to an overall community health issue."

Her organization has polled a sample of school children  to test their
self-reported drug usage and their  attitudes about drugs, and "we are
seeing differences.  They're slight, but they are important ones," she
said.  "We are seeing significant change in how young people  are
looking at methamphetamine."

The students surveyed reported practically no ice use  in the past 30
days in the 12th, 10th, eighth and sixth  grades.

Some of the oldest students had tried the drug in the  past, but
fifth- and eighth-graders reported "zero use  from the beginning, zero
experimentation. I mean, they  think of this as bad stuff, so all of
the hype that we  did five years go, all of the real heavy-duty stuff
made its impact," Sears said.

Even older students reported a high level of anti-ice  peer pressure,
she said. The students surveyed reported  that "they think everybody's
going to think they're  nuts if they use ice," Sears said. "The bottom
line is  we've got a lot of kids who are making really good  decisions."

ALTERNATIVES TO DRUGS

The injection of federal funds has not dried up yet.  Kenoi said U.S.
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawai'i, has  secured $5 million in federal
budget earmarks over the  past three years to improve the Big Island's
public  transportation, an initiative Kenoi said is grounded in  the
idea that a better bus system will help prevent  teen drug use.

Young people in rural areas of the Big Island still  often have
nothing constructive to do, and no  transportation to get them to
organized sports or other  activities. Improved transportation meshes
with what  Kenoi calls the "big next step," which is to open up  many
more schools after regular hours in a partnership  with the state
Department of Education.

The idea is to make more school libraries, meeting  rooms, computer
labs and gyms available to youths who  would otherwise be idle and
unsupervised.

"We just need to provide resources and provide access  to facilities,
keep our gyms, parks and pools open in  the evening hours so that
there's no excuse for our  kids not to be involved or engaged in
positive  activities," Kenoi said.

"We've got to stop making excuses for not helping our  kids."
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