NOT GOING AWAY

Twenty-four years of eradication may have altered the marijuana industry on
the Big Island, but it’s hardly going away.

“The only thing I’ve seen eradication change is the price of marijuana, not
the availability,” said Phil Geraci, a counselor at Hilo High School. “It’s
been my experience that most people here don’t pay for it. It’s either
traded or they grow their own or they rip it off from somebody.”

A 15-year-old sophomore from Hilo High School listed the beaches and
hangouts where he sees marijuana every day — Four Mile Beach, Lanes,
Containers.

But he said marijuana and other drugs have virtually disappeared from Hilo
High because of a zero-tolerance policy that levies an automatic transfer to
an alternative school for anyone caught with drugs or alcohol. That has left
Hilo High an island of sobriety in a community where marijuana is rampant,
Geraci said.

“Here in Hilo, there is a serious marijuana problem,” he said. “It has hurt
families. It pulls people apart. It makes anyone who abuses it less of a
person, and that affects every part of them, not only their families but
their productivity with society.”

The Big Island Substance Abuse Council treated 464 clients from 1997 to
1998, 330 of them from the eastern side of the Big Island. Clients had
various drug and alcohol problems, but marijuana was a consistent issue for
90 percent of them, said Wes Margheim, the organization’s coordinator of
adult services.

Even when marijuana is the only drug present, it creates problems by killing
motivation and ambition, Margheim said. The $400-an-ounce price on the Big
Island also drains family incomes.

“It affects men and women both,” Margheim said. “There are arguments,
neglect of children, lack of responsibility.”

Elyse Douglas was a 21-year-old Hilo Community College student and a
marijuana smoker who was stoned most of the time. She still managed to own a
modest house and was otherwise doing fine, said her father, Lorn Douglas, a
custom chopstick maker from Kehena.

Elyse Douglas remembers when an ounce of pot went from $275 to $300. “If you
wanted really good quality, I paid $600 one time,” she said.

There is considerable debate about whether the crackdown on marijuana
created an opening for harder, cheaper and more dangerous drugs such as
crystal methamphetamine, or “ice.”

Elyse Douglas believes her addictive personality would have led her to crack
eventually. Her father maintains the price of pakalolo drove her to it.

“She just couldn’t afford pot anymore,” Lorn Douglas said. “So a friend
said, ‘Try this.’ From that day, she went from a regular kid into a crack
addict and an outlaw.”

The difference in drugs was as dramatic as it was dangerous, Elyse Douglas
said.

“With marijuana, I was stoned all of the time, but with crack I was
stealing, would hurt anyone, do anything to get my drugs,” she said. “My dad
is my only parent, and I stole from him. I was hanging out with heavy,
big-time drug dealers in very precarious, dangerous situations, stealing.”

One night, Douglas tracked his daughter to the home of a drug dealer, forced
her into the car and drove her to the Hilo police station, where officers
said they had been looking for her. Elyse Douglas went through drug
treatment on the Big Island, spent 18 months in a California half-way house
and now works as a traffic court clerk in Santa Barbara, Calif.

This year, at 28, she celebrates five years of sobriety.

Looking back at what his daughter went through, Douglas said: “I’m very
proud of my daughter, and yes, I’d prefer she had stayed on marijuana. It’s
a crime that marijuana’s against the law.”