ILLEGAL DRUG USE INDICTS SOCIETY

In the early going, the Legislature's approach to the "ice" problem in
Hawaii seems to be coming down to ignoring the underlying causes in favor of
appeasing voters with a get-tough approach.

"It looks like everyone agrees that there's going to have to be
incarceration as a major component," said Sen. Colleen Hanabusa. Then, in
what looks like an after thought, the co-chair of the Joint House-Senate
Committee on Crystal Methamphetamine (Ice) said: "So is treatment and so is
prevention."

Later, she said: "We would like to believe that prevention and treatment
will do the trick, and I think it maybe will take care of part of the
program."

The Legislature does not need to invent any new wheels to fight the ice
epidemic. There are existing programs with proven track records. The Drug
Court is one of those. Other private nonprofit organizations have shown the
effectiveness of the same approach -- close supervision, intense counseling
that involves the individual's entire family on a long-term basis, all in
the shadow of prison sentences. The few residential programs available are
particularly effective when dealing with troubled youth, the individuals
most likely to get involved in illegal drugs and criminal activity to
support the use of the illegal drugs.

Police, prosecutors and some members of the community think the illegal drug
threat to society requires compromising individual rights. The alternative
- -- a humane approach that seeks to find the reasons behind the drug use --
is much more complicated and, potentially, much more expensive in the short
term although building more and more prisons seems more expensive in the
long term.

Suppliers need to be dealt with harshly, but more than 40 years of using
prison time as a deterrent against the use of illegal drugs has proven
conclusively that the only deterrence afforded is for the individual while
he or she is in prison -- and even then, the individual might continue
getting illegal drugs.

The question that needs to be asked is why so many of Hawaii's people get
involved with a drug that insulates them from everyday life. The answer is
in the details of that everyday life.