'ICE' HAS FANGS IN LOCAL SOCIETY

Drug Is Destroying Families, Killing Residents

HILO -- Hungry children sat quietly in a darkened living room, terrified of
their abusive father. In the kitchen, maggots and rotting food filled the
fridge. With the electricity out, cooking was done on a propane stove. The
furniture was repossessed. The welfare check was already spent. The family was
being evicted.

None of this mattered to Wayne and Dina Tamura.

As long as the couple from the tiny Big Island town of Ka'u was high on crystal
methamphetamine, they were happy.

''I didn't think about the kids. I didn't want to spend money on diapers,''
Wayne Tamura said. ''All I wanted to do was smoke.''

On the streets, it's known as ''ice'' -- the highly pure, crystalline form of
the stimulant methamphetamine. Smoking it provides a high so long and intense
that addiction is instant, withdrawal is excruciating and damage often
permanent.

Since its introduction from Asia in the mid-1980s, ice has burrowed into every
community in Hawaii, becoming widely used and readily available. For the better
part of two decades, the ice problem was largely ignored.

No longer.

Today, this insidious drug takes lives and threatens the very way of life in
these multicultural islands where close-knit families often live three
generations to a household. It's also the target of an unprecedented effort
involving communities, law enforcement and every level of government.

''If we don't grab a hold of this moment in time, we're going to lose a lot
more lives before things get better,'' said Edward Kubo Jr., the U.S. Attorney
for Hawaii.

Statistics only tell part of the story.

Nearly 40 percent of men jailed in Honolulu tested positive for
methamphetamine, higher than any other major U.S. city in a 2001 study.

The number of ice users admitted for treatment statewide has roughly doubled
over the last four years, surpassing alcohol-abuse admissions. The number of
deaths on Oahu in which methamphetamine turned up in autopsies has quadrupled
since 1991.

''Clearly, Hawaii is being killed,'' Kubo said. ''We're on our knees right
now.''

Though ice has become established in other pockets of the country, such as
Southern and Central California and into the Southwest, and is spreading
eastward, officials in Hawaii have been calling the islands' problem the worst
anywhere. It's been available here for more than a decade.

Now politicians, police and citizens are fighting back.

Lawmakers took the rare step of creating a joint House-Senate committee to
formulate a legislative attack plan solely against ice.

Special police units are being established to beat back the ice menace.

Citizens have lined highways for miles to wave signs telling dealers to get out
of their neighborhoods.

All of these efforts come together this month when Lt. Gov. James ''Duke''
Aiona convenes a statewide drug summit in Waikiki to develop even more
strategies.

''It's just an insidious drug,'' said Aiona, a former prosecutor and state
judge. ''I've never seen the devastation from the other drugs like this. I'm
not saying there isn't devastation by cocaine and crack, but the extent of it,
the quickness of it, the intensity of it, is overwhelming.''

For the Tamuras, addiction quickly mounted into a $500 a day habit, leaving
them unemployable, broke, frustrated and searching for more ice.

Dina Tamura used ice even knowing firsthand of the dangers -- she lost her
younger brother to the drug. He was only 19. Ice made Wayne Tamura extremely
agitated, aggressive and paranoid to the point of hallucinating.

The couple would stay high and awake for more than a week at a time.

''After you stay up for days, it's mean how the brain plays tricks on you,'' he
said.

It wasn't until the state took custody of their children for a third time that
the couple decided to get treatment earlier this year, seeking help at Big
Island Substance Abuse Council in Hilo -- one of the few ice treatment programs
on the island.

They met Joshua Lagmay, 26, a recovering user who recalled how the drug made
him terrorize his Kauai community, even his own family, simply to feed his
addiction.

Lagmay would steal, rob, con everyone he knew -- and some he didn't. He often
targeted his 93-year-old grandfather for money. Lagmay even prostituted
himself.

''For me, it was coming to absolute desperation,'' he said. ''You're at the
bottom of the pit. You can't dig any further down or you're dead.

''It takes your soul away.''

Like many others, Alisha Brenneman knew she was hooked from the first puff.

''I knew I liked it way too much,'' the 23-year-old Kona woman said. ''It just
took all my cares away. I finally had a friend again.''

She lost her job, custody of her two children, her home and nearly her sanity.
She was seven months pregnant, and admits that at the time she was trying to
abort her pregnancy by injecting the drug.

That's when she got help.

''I didn't have any place to go,'' Brenneman said, ''and nobody wanted to give
me drugs because I was pregnant.''

Today she celebrates her life with daughter Rayanne Heaven, who is cared for by
her mother. Unlike many ice babies, she was born without medical complications.

''She's a blessing,'' Brenneman said. ''Without her I probably would be still
out there.''

Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim, who declared ''war on ice'' in February 2001
shortly after taking office, says that with its rural surroundings and no major
organized crime group controlling the drug trade, the Big Island was a ripe
target for ice dealers.

''It was an open market,'' he said. ''It was easy prey.''

Sgt. Marshall Kanehailua, head of a new police ice task force, said he believes
the county's high unemployment rate and close-knit culture play a role in
helping the drug gain ground.

''Your group of influence is always around you,'' he said. ''Even if you get
out of treatment, you cannot get away from it, unless you move off the
island.''

Kanehailua also credits the drug's powerful high.

''It's like drinking coffee from McDonald's, and then going to a latte from
Starbucks,'' he said. ''Basically, once you go to that higher drug or that
higher high, it's hard to come back. Then it becomes the drug of choice.''

There's no precise count of Hawaii's ice users. Estimates range from 8,000 to
120,000, mainly because officials say its hard to get credible information from
users and recovering addicts.

Aiona said he doesn't rely on statistics.

''I know we got a problem and we got to respond and that's the bottom line,
regardless of what the stats say,'' he said.

But there is some striking data to support the notion that Hawaii has one of
the worst ice problems in the country.

Of 33 major cities, Honolulu had the highest percentage of male arrestees
testing positive for methamphetamine in 2001. Honolulu (37.4 percent) was
followed by three California cities: San Jose (30.2), Sacramento (29.3) and San
Diego (27.9), according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Arrestee Drug Abuse
Monitoring program.

The number of users admitted to Hawaii's state-funded drug treatment centers
for crystal meth abuse has nearly doubled to 2,888 since 1998, said Elaine
Wilson, head of the state Health Department's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division.

In 2002, crystal meth overtook alcohol as the primary substance used by adults
admitted to isle treatment centers, Wilson said.

The Honolulu Medical Examiner's office reported that deaths among ice users
have quadrupled in the past decade to a record 62 last year, surpassing deaths
related to any other illegal drug or alcohol.

''That's scary. That's unheard of,'' said University of Hawaii sociologist
William Wood, who also works with the National Institute on Drug Abuse. ''If
you look at the deaths, those in treatment, the disruption in the community,
there could be no doubt that if it's 10 people doing it, then we've got a
problem we've got to deal with.''

Police across the state blame ice for a surge in property crimes, domestic
violence and psychotic behavior, all of which put officers at greater risk. In
March, Honolulu police officer Glen Gaspar was shot dead in a Kapolei ice cream
parlor while apprehending a suspect who was under the influence of ice.

Peggy Hilton, an administrator with state Child Welfare Services, said she
conservatively estimates that 85 percent of the cases her East Hawaii office
oversees involve homes with ice abuse.

''There was alcohol all along, with marijuana, and then we saw cocaine in the
1980s, but nothing has risen to the level of seriousness we have seen with ice
in the past five to seven years,'' she said.

Most of the ice in Hawaii is now produced in Mexico and California, according
to federal authorities. While meth in other states is sometimes manufactured
locally and usually snorted, ingested or injected, Hawaii prefers the imported,
smokeable ice, which is higher in purity.

Kaipo Like, a clinical supervisor at an outpatient center in Keaau, said the
transition from smoking marijuana -- which is widely used and grown on the Big
Island -- to smoking ice is natural because its the same physical action.

''Here a lot of individuals use crystal meth as a social drug, almost like a
peace pipe thing,'' said Like, who used ice in the 1980s.

For recovering addicts like the Tamuras, the allure of the drug is still there.
And while that feeling may never subside completely, with help the Tamuras are
trying to rebuild their lives and be reunited with all their five children as a
family.

For the first time, they are looking forward to the future together.

''I'm in love with him again,'' Dina Tamura said. ''He has changed so much.
He's like a man again -- a husband and father.''

He is, to her, everything that ice had taken away.