‘Ice’ problem needs new approaches

Crystal methamphetamine has become an enormous scourge in Hawaii, with the islands entangled in a web spanning the Pacific. It takes a terrible toll on our society, a partial accounting of which appears in a new Hawaii High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area report.

The "2012 Threat Assessment and Strategy" study by HIDTA, which is administered by the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy, chronicles the trafficking of various drugs in Hawaii. But it is meth — "ice" — that is most worrisome: Seizures are increasing and prices decreasing while drug purity remains high. This signals that the availability of meth in Hawaii has risen.

Meth was at the center of 90 percent of drug-offender prosecutions, and the drug is the impetus for property crimes, some of which escalate into violence, according to the report.

A far more comprehensive effort is needed now to disrupt meth trafficking, starting with shipments of the raw materials to production centers, and continuing through the smuggling of the finished product to global market. Law enforcement and social service agencies must redouble efforts to deter the usage of the drug through educational outreach and to break the trafficking circuits.

City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro makes a strong case for attacking the problem forcefully through better cooperation among global partners. That’s the thrust of the Hawaii International Drug Trafficking Summit that will convene Oct. 27 and 28 in Waikiki, a conference bringing together prosecutors and law enforcement officials from Hawaii with counterparts from Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.

This is a daunting challenge, given that some countries’ economies depend almost entirely on trafficking, Kaneshiro said.

"Asia has now become the primary source of ephedrine, the primary ingredient in methamphetamine," Kaneshiro said, while acknowledging the finished shipments of meth come more frequently now from Mexico and the West Coast.

Cracking down on trafficking at all points can be accomplished only by forging these international ties. Increasingly, he said, Asian laws are enabling property seizures in these cases, which is helping to finance cooperative prosecution.

One model he cited is to charge trafficking suspects with conspiracy for Honolulu-based offenses, enabling further investigation and prosecution in the home country to proceed quickly.

The overall cost of meth abuse in Hawaii, according to the report, adds up to $500 million each year for incarceration, foster care, health care, lost employee productivity and treatment.

In addition, new numbers from the Honolulu-based drug-testing firm Diagnostic Laboratory Services Inc. show just how stubbornly meth usage is persisting in the workplace. Use has been hovering at around a half-percent of the workforce, going as high as 1.1 percent in the first quarter of this year.

Carl Linden, DLS scientific director of toxicology, said that addictive behavior is pretty firmly rooted, and he’s right that a segment of the population is going to use addictive substances of one kind or another. But meth use leaves terrible scars and whatever society can do to combat its prevalence represents prudent policy.

The Hawaii Meth Project is working to shrink demand by educating youth about the drug’s potential effects, which includes neurological impairment as well as tissue damage. According to the HIDTA report, the project has had a positive impact on younger adolescents but there is no preventive educational counterpart for young adults. Outreach in this age group should intensify, and the privately funded project deserves continued support.

But the prosecutor is right: The problem has grown to a disturbing level, one that calls for an attack on both the supply of and the demand for this drug.