Portrait of 'ice' epidemic gives legislators chills

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

A joint state House and Senate panel yesterday got some grim news on Hawai'i's crystal methamphetamine or "ice" epidemic from agencies and nonprofit organizations that deal with addicts.

At times, the scope of the problem seemed overwhelming:

• Hawai'i leads the nation in the percentage of arrested men who test positive for ice.
• According to a recent Department of Health survey, Hawai'i has the nation's highest rate of adults who have tried ice.
• Ice has replaced alcohol as the primary substance used by Hawai'i adults served by community-based treatment programs.

"Welcome to the ice age," said Honolulu Prosecutor Peter Carlisle, who admitted to committee panel chairman Rep. Dennis Arakaki, D-30th (Moanalua, Kalihi Valley, 'Alewa), that he was there to "frighten everybody."

Scare them Carlisle did, using a PowerPoint horror show that contrasted the image of a normal man's brain against the hideous blood-starved brain of a man on crystal meth.

But the shocker came after that same brain had been off ice for four months: no apparent improvement.

The point Carlisle wanted to drive home is that crystal meth can alter the structure of the brain permanently.

Carlisle said police are taught to deal cautiously with "tweakers" — ice users coming off the high who are aggressive, paranoid, impulsive and can erupt into violence. He said ice is the prime reason there have been more police shootouts in Honolulu in recent years.

Carlisle said the solution is not as complicated as some might think.

"Step one is that you've got to identify the people who've got the problem," he said, labeling ice users a social infection and advocating drug testing in schools. "Do what you can to stop it when they're young, when treatment is going to work — not when it's gotten worse.

"Step two is, once they are so far gone that they are criminals, isolate them from the rest of us. The way to do that is through incarceration."

Janice Bennett, coordinator of the Hawai'i Drug Court Program, said "76 percent of all drug court admissions identified methamphetamine as their primary drug of choice."

Barry Carlton, chief of the Department of Psychiatry for The Queen's Medical Center, confirmed that ice is capable of altering the structure of the brain.

"It's like playing Russian roulette," Carlton said. "There are some people who use ice whose brains do seem to recover. There is another group that, either because their use has been so frequent or intense, that the damage appears to become permanent."

The problem, he said, is that there's no way to know which users will recover.

"The damage is that the drug changes the way the brain functions, so what were temporary hallucinations can become permanent. Where the paranoid delusions were temporary and went away, they then become permanent."

Adding to the problem is the fact that ice is readily available to kids for the price of a movie ticket, Carlton said. He cited the case of a sexually abused runaway teen from a broken home who was brought to Queen's by police and tested positive for ice.

The 16-year-old girl, who showed little interest in changing her lifestyle, told doctors, "Ice is exciting. Home is boring. School is boring."

But while ice may be a cheap thrill, the cost to society in treatment, incarceration and shattered lives is staggering.

Elaine Wilson, chief of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division of the Department of Health, presented lawmakers with a 46-page document crammed with charts, diagrams and statistics, as well as prevention principles and effective programs for treating ice addiction.

"This is a huge social problem," said Barbara Mathews, vice president for patient care at Queen's. By the end of the briefing, most panelists agreed.

"It's giving lawmakers a view of crystal meth and the degree of the problems we're facing," said Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha). "I'm not sure we all had a complete handle on the intensity of it."