Letters to the Editor
Web site has details on failure to recycle
The Legislature is currently looking at Senate Bill 2005, commonly known as the "bottle bill." Anyone interested in learning more about this subject should check out the Web site www.BottleBill.org
The following statement describing the site has been taken directly from the site itself: "It is a project of the Container Recycling Institute (CRI) (www.container-recycling.org). Founded in 1991, CRI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that studies and promotes policies and practices that shift the social and environmental costs associated with manufacturing, recycling and disposal of container and packaging waste from government and taxpayers to producers and consumers."
The institute plays a vital role in educating policy-makers, government officials and the general public regarding the social and environmental impacts of the production and disposal of no-deposit, no-return beverage containers and the need for producers to take responsibility for their wasteful packaging.
Please don't forget to share your thoughts regarding Senate Bill No. 2005 with your elected officials.
Heidi Jaworski
Kailua, Kona, Big Island
Acquiring barren land impractical, wasteful
What's wrong with this picture? The state of Hawai'i pays $25 million to the Kamehameha Schools for a barren piece of land (a portion of Sandy Beach) to keep barren.
This is the same piece of land on which the school was going to build new housing that would relieve Hawai'i's housing shortage.
The $25 million could have been used to build parks, fix schools, shelter the homeless and other very useful things.
If these same decision-makers ran a company, they would be laughed out of the boardroom, and the business would go bankrupt for making totally impractical, irrational and very wastefulÊdecisions.
Colin Kau
Shouldn't hurricane fund be deductible?
With the Democrats in the state Legislature poised to confiscate the Hurricane Relief Fund, a couple of questions arise that should be addressed:
• What was the nature of the insurance assessments? Was it a true insurance premium, a donation for relief efforts when a hurricane hit or a tax assessment?
• Regardless of the initial nature of the payments made to the fund, once the Legislature acts to confiscate the fund for the state's general fund, then wouldn't all the payments made to the relief fund be deemed taxes paid? Would then all the payments made by the homeowners to the fund be deductible as taxes paid to the state?
Russel H. Yamashita
Gambling doesn't create corruption, moral decay
Hawai'i needs gambling. This nonsense of it causing corruption and moral decay has no basis.
Gambling is a regulated industry that does nothing but generate tax income for Las Vegas and the Caribbean.
Our state has substandard schools and a sagging economy. It needs to come out of the dark ages on this issue. Gambling would help tourism.
This is not a morality issue; it is one of survival.
Barbara Williams
Don't regulate price of medical insurance
If Hawai'i controls the price of medical insurance paid by the consumer to HMSA and Kaiser, without also controlling the prices charged to HMSA and Kaiser by providers of medical services (doctors, dentists, pharmacies, medical labs, etc.), it will be travelling down the same road taken by California regulators that destroyed its electric utility industry and led to steep increases in consumer electric rates.
California forced the utility companies to sell power to consumers for much less than the utilities had to pay for that same power on the wholesale market. The results were entirely predictable: The utilities were forced into bankruptcy, and the state was forced to get into the power business in order to keep the lights on.
The state raised rates by more than 33 percent, to over 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, and still ran up a debt of over $12 billion that taxpayers and consumers will eventually have to pay. And in the process, businesses and consumers were constantly threatened with power blackouts because the state could not buy enough power.
Hawai'i will destroy its medical insurance industry, just as California destroyed its electric utility, if state Insurance Commissioner Wayne Metcalf succeeds in controlling "retail" prices while leaving "wholesale" prices uncontrolled.
Thomas J. Macdonald
Revise speed limits
Now that people have had their day in court, and we have been delugedÊby the media regarding the traffic cams, let's petition our lawmakers to thoroughly review and revise the speed limits that presently control our traffic flow on O'ahu.
Joe Harding
Kailua
Hawai'i sorely lacking in teen drug treatment
Two Advertiser articles, "Drug treatment eludes children" on Feb. 9 and "Survey finds alarming rise in Ecstasy use" on Feb. 11, both reflect the alarming number of adolescents who have alcohol and other drug dependencies and the sorry state of resources available to provide treatment.
In Hawai'i, we now have approximately 14,000 kids who meet the criteria for treatment of chemical dependency. We're not talking about drug usage, but drug dependency.
The alcohol and drug treatment community is lucky to have the resources to treat at most 1,000 kids a year. That leaves some 13,000 kids untreated and at high risk for school dropout, violence, crime, depression, suicide, DUIs and worse: car wrecks. If they're fortunate, they live to reach adulthood, where the problem magnifies.
The personal cost to them is horrendous, and it will cost us even more when you consider the police work, probation, courts, medical costs and, eventually, prison or drug treatment. And then there are the costs that are hard to measure — family turmoil, broken homes and the quality of life in our shared community.
The Partnership for a Drug-Free America survey indicates that 12 percent of teens have tried Ecstacy, which means Ecstasy is now the third most popular drug, behind marijuana (41 percent) and alcohol (53 percent). In other words, 2.8 million kids have used Ecstacy, and given the mushrooming rise in popularity, it suggests that millions more will probably try or use Ecstacy in the next few years.
That's not an encouraging or positive commentary on efforts ("War on Drugs") to deal with alcohol and drug dependency.
Maybe if we were to use just some of the billions we are spending on enforcement and incarceration, we might be able to provide treatment to a few more kids and save not only their lives, but also a few dollars and a whole lot of work as well.
M.P. "Andy" Anderson
CEO, Hina Mauka
