Honolulu Weekly

Coverstory October 29, 2003
Iced out: Did the crystal methamphetamine media blitz last month daze the public?
     
By Phil Hayworth

Hawai‘i’s got an ice problem. If you don’t know that by now, you’ve been living under a rock. Heck, even the British know about our problem, thanks to a June 15 article in the London Observer entitled “Poverty Stricken Hawaiians In Grip of ‘Ice’ Addiction.”

The Observer’s Richard Luscombe wrote that “between 10 and 15 percent of Hawai‘i’s population of almost 1.25 million are users.” That means we have 180,000 ice fiends — one around nearly every coconut tree.

 “If that were true, you wouldn’t be able to leave the house,” said Bill Haning, addiction researcher and assistant dean of the University of Hawai‘i’s Medical
School. “They probably meant that it was the total number of chronic users of all drugs, including alcohol.”

 The truth is no one knows how many ice addicts there are — somewhere between 8,000 and 40,000, according to various reports. Still, that kind of mistake is bad news for our No. 1 business, tourism — even if it is just the British.

This summer’s unprecedented media blitz on the subject culminated in the Sept. 24 prime-time broadcast of the Edgy Lee documentary Ice: Hawaii’s Crystal Meth Epidemic. Like a tsunami warning, it simultaneously aired on all nine regular TV stations and Cox radio — commercial free.

Stations collectively gave up about $300,000 in billable commercial time. That kind of bottom-line concession from a notoriously money-conscious industry was, in and of itself, noteworthy.

 In spite of the silhouetted interviews and scripted calls for action from the governor and others, Edgy Lee’s dispatch from the bowels of ice addiction did what all those roadside marches, community town halls, drug summits and news reports, perhaps, failed to do: dramatically drive home the message that we have a major ice problem.

Public awareness was at an all-time high the next day. Even normally sober-minded folk began to suspect the hyper-attentive waiter at their favorite restaurant might be using ice; anyone with a spotless kitchen or insomnia was suspect.

So why did fewer than a dozen people attend the joint legislative House-Senate Task Force on Ice and Drug Abatement at the 300-seat Capitol auditorium Sept. 27?

 Perhaps word of the meeting got lost in the blitz.

But attendee Kat Brady, coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons, had another explanation: The public is “iced out.”

 “Media tends to focus on one substance. It’s like hearing about SARS and forgetting that TB and malaria are bigger worldwide health issues,” Haning said. “If all you hear is bad news, then the human thing to do is defend against the idea.”

Are we iced out?

No, says Lee, who’s already gearing up for a second ice documentary. According to her, the tepid response is the result of a lack of leadership more than anything psychological.

Learning curve

 So far, here’s what we’ve learned: That ice is almost immediately addictive, knows few socioeconomic boundaries, that efforts to interdict it have been feeble and that it burns irreparable holes in users’ brains.

You can buy most of the materials to make it at your local drugstore, so any late night hunt for Sudafed could have clerks eyeballing you funny.

Additionally, innocent property owners could lose their property if they rent to users.

Your best bet to help, it seems, might be to adopt an ice baby or become a foster parent or at least write a check to Narcotics Anonymous. Treatment may be our best hope, but a cure is illusive. Even as older addicts struggle to get clean, new ones come on line, having a cumulative, generational effect. We’d better pony up because we’re running out of time.

 “We’re riding a wave that’s gaining both in height and momentum,” Haning warned.Even after all the evidence, Lee says, leaders — including media — remain unconvinced, at least about the extent of the problem.“Stop arguing about the numbers,” she screamed. “Do we have to have President

Bush himself tell us we have an ice problem?”

The president never mentioned ice — or anything else of local import, for that matter — during his speech at the $1,000 and $2,000 per plate shindig at the Hilton
Hawaiian Village Oct. 23.

Crack, pot theories

We have only ourselves to blame for ice, according to one theory. A 1989 “Survey of H awaii’s War on Drugs” quotes former Attorney General
Warren Price as predicting “The destruction of the [marijuana] industry would create another problem: there would simply be a shift to other competitively priced drugs.”

In other words, the successful Operation Green Harvest uprooted the marijuana supply — and ice filled the void. That argument is still around, and the implication is that we should bring marijuana back.

The theory also suggests that part of the population has an intrinsic need to get high.

 “That’s a ridiculous argument,” Haning said. “It’s like saying that because burglaries go down, murders go up.”

According to Elaine Wilson of the Department of Health’s division of drug abuse, about 10 percent of Hawai‘i’s population — through the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s and up through the present — chronically use some type of substance.

If ice has become the drug of choice for a consistent population of users, then nervous agitation and sleeplessness is the new definition of “high” instead of the old-school euphoria from alcohol, crack, heroin and marijuana.

Ice coverage is back to pre-blitz levels with coverage for now, limited to big busts and the well-publicized Tayshea Aiwohi case, the first person to be prosecuted on a charge of manslaughter for allegedly using ice during the last days of her pregnancy.

We’ll probably get another blitz when Lee’s second installment airs next year.

Perhaps by then we’ll have a better understanding of the scope of the problem.

In the meantime, wax your boards, dudes, because there’s a big wave coming.
     
 
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