Senator tells of drug addiction's effect on family

Associated Press

The Senate's co-chair of the House-Senate Task Force on Ice and Drug Abatement, prompted by Hawai'i's growing epidemic of addictions to crystal methamphetamine, gave a chilling description yesterday of how ice tore apart her immediate family last year.

In debate on the task force's package to pay for drug education, prevention and treatment programs, Sen. Melodie Aduja said she "personally knows the tragedy that all too many families suffer when someone close to them falls victim to drug addiction."

She noted recent news reports that her former husband of six years, Lee Williams, was one of 12 people arrested early this month during an undercover drug operation in Honolulu's Chinatown area.

Aduja, D-23rd (Kane'ohe, Kahuku), has said she divorced Williams, a convicted felon, last August because he had dropped out of a drug rehabilitation program.

"I and my two small children lived in a world of lies, abandonment and betrayal that the drug addict creates to hide his addiction," she said. "Your Windward senator has spent sleepless nights trying to comfort my crying children because they don't know why daddy hasn't been coming home.

"I have seen the sorrow in my own children's eyes when the daddy they love and so desperately need doesn't come home because he's doing something he did not want his family to see," Aduja said.

Aduja's campaign fund is under investigation by the Campaign Spending Commission over more than two dozen cash payments, most of them $500, made to Williams during the 2002 election campaign.