BIG ISLE REPORT ON MARIJUANA ERADICATION FAILS TO PLEASE COUNCIL CRITICS

Hilo - Hawaii County police are meeting the goals of federal grants to
supress marijuana growing, and procedures are available to handle public
complaints about it, a new county report says.

The study was written by the county legislative auditor for the county
Council after marijuana legalization advocates testified in December that
the County Charter requires a "mandatory program review" of various
programs at least every four years.

The report was prompted by two federal grants totaling $353,294.

The conclusion about meeting the goals of the grants appeared to satisfy
neither the marijuana acticvists nor county officials who produced the report.

The report is "flawed by design and fraudulent by intent" says a previously
filed court document in which marijuana advocate Roger Christie and others
seek to impeach Mayor Stephen Yamashiro and six members of the Council who
voted to accept the federal money.

Councilwoman Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd said, "It looks like the stated goals
are being met adaquately. Not superbly, but the best we could do (with the
money available)."

Legislative auditor Constance Kiriu wrote, "An examination of 'the
effectiveness of each program grant' is somewhat hindered by a lack of
well-defined and quantifiable measurements and benchmarks."

A new federal evaluation system is scheduled to go into effect in the
future, she noted.

County police have been conducting marijuana eradication efforts since 1978.

Throughout the 1990's, critics complained whenever the council accepted
federal money for the effort.

They finally got the Council to do a report in December, but immediately
disagreed with the limited nature of the report.

"It's another smoking-gun piece of evidence of malfeasance on the part of
the County Council," Christie said yesterday.

Councilwoman Leithead-Todd said the marijuana advocates want a report which
shows that limiting the availability of marijuana forces drug users to turn
to more dangerous drugs.

The report would be larger, more expensive, more difficult to produce, and
probably wouldn't show that the lack of marijuana leads to harder drugs,
she said.

Another complaint is that eradication helicopters fly too low and disrupt
the lives of people and livestock.

Staff from the legislative auditor's office flew in a helicipter, then
deliberately dropped to within 200 feet of grazing cows, the report says.

"A few cows lazily turned their heads to observe us but were otherwise
unperturbed," the report says.