Drug-treatment bill negotiated
By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau
Lawmakers yesterday moved closer to requiring courts to sentence nonviolent drug offenders to treatment instead of prison, but whether the Legislature will financially back the policy is unclear.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Brian Kanno proposed giving such offenders treatment over incarceration, during House-Senate conference negotiations, a shift from his previous position on the issue. Last year Kanno rejected the idea — proposed by Gov. Ben Cayetano — and earlier this session he wanted to let the voters decide by putting the issue on the ballot.
Yesterday Kanno, D-20th ('Ewa Beach, Makakilo, Kapolei), said the Senate is "recognizing the severe impact drugs have on our community and looking at a different way it can be addressed."
Public safety officials have said about 85 percent of Hawai'i's 5,200 prison inmates have drug problems and that about half the inmates are in prison because they violated probation or parole, usually because they resumed drug use.
Lawmakers and public safety officials still need to determine exactly how many people would be eligible for treatment under the proposal and how much money would be needed. Advocates say it would take at least $4 million to start the program.
"Everything hinges on money," said House Public Safety and Military Affairs chairman Nestor Garcia, who has supported drug treatment measures. "All of this is just talk. I can have the best policy in the world, but if I don't have the money to back it up all I've got is an unfunded mandate."
The administration has struggled to get money for more drug treatment programs. The Legislature last year gave $4.4 million for a two-year pilot program for addicts on probation or parole, but the program was delayed because money for the second year might be cut from the state budget.
Supporters of Senate Bill 1188 say giving drug offenders treatment instead of prison would save the state money and prevent offenders from returning to prison. Opponents say the state needs the threat of prison over drug offenders and that the state already has a drug court that diverts certain offenders from prison to treatment.
House-Senate conference negotiations on the bill will continue Monday.
Meanwhile, the Drug Policy Forum of Hawai'i is launching a $20,000 television ad campaign promoting drug treatment over incarceration. The ads — tagged with the theme "Treatment Works; Prisons Don't" — feature retired Circuit Court judge Masato Doi and Dancetta Feary Kamai, sister of the late Hawaiian musician Bryant "Mackey" Feary Jr.
Feary, a singer-songwriter who fronted the popular quartet Kalapana in the 1970s and '80s, struggled with a crystal methamphetamine addiction before hanging himself in his cell at the Halawa Correctional Facility Feb. 20, 1999.
Kamai, a former police detective, said drug addiction is "a plague that's spreading like wildfire and putting it behind bars does nothing to get rid of it. It will only cost us more money and more heartache."
