Posted on: Sunday, February 6, 2005

EDITORIAL
'Ice' can hit where we least expect it

It's a mistake to suppose that alcoholics are stereotypical men in overcoats, sitting in gutters and guzzling from bottles in brown paper bags.

It's a mistake to suppose that drug users are from the other side of the tracks, thieves and derelicts, people "not like us."

Marc Oley, a former police officer and chairman of the state parole board, was not the sort of man you'd expect to be a user of crystal methamphetamine.

But you'd be wrong. Hono-lulu's medical examiner, Dr. Kanthi De Alwis, found that Oley, who died Christmas Day at age 60, used "ice" and died as a consequence of smoking it.

People who knew Oley were stunned by the cause of death. The tragedy is that they didn't notice in time that Oley was in the grip of this fatal addiction. The lesson, if there is one, is that no one is immune and that it will take all of us, working together, to fight this ice epidemic.