LEGISLATORS DECLARE WAR ON 'ICE'

House, Senate Launch Joint Committee To Address Drug Epidemic

HONOLULU -- House and Senate leaders declared war Tuesday on Hawaii's
epidemic use of crystal methamphetamine, the highly addictive, easy-to-make
illegal stimulant drug known on the streets as ''ice.''

Despite the urgency expressed by House Speaker Calvin Say, Senate President
Robert Bunda and others, the legislative solutions aren't likely to be
realized before this time next year, presenting lawmakers with some grim
reality as they work.

By June 2004, at least 60 more ice users will be dead, more than 2,000 will
have visited hospital emergency rooms, dozens of families will be wrecked
and otherwise promising lives will be ruined, based on trends in current
statistics on ice use.

Bunda, D-Kaena-Wahiawa-Pupukea, and Say, D-St. Louis Heights-Wilhelmina
Rise, announced the naming of a rare joint House-Senate committee that will
hold hearings statewide. It includes members of the Republican minority.

The discussion will include the possibility of drug testing of public school
children, something Republican Gov. Linda Lingle and Lt. Gov. James ''Duke''
Aiona have endorsed.

''We must find new ways to fight the battle against ice,'' said Say at an
outdoor news conference that used the emergency room of The Queen's Medical
Center across the street as a backdrop. ''We have had summits and meetings
and conferences and more meetings. And the truth is we are losing the battle
against ice.''

In answer to a reporter's question, leaders said several references to past
fruitless summits, meetings and conferences on ice were not aimed at
Lingle's assignment for Aiona to hold a major summit on ice this summer.

''What we'd like to do is to work together with him and his staff and the
people he has enrolled to look at this epidemic,'' said Bunda.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairwoman Colleen Hanabusa, D-Nanakuli-Makua,
said lawmakers hope to come up with a new chapter in the state laws that
will focus on the ice problem.

''We must tackle this problem as no other provision of this law has done,''
she said. ''We must look at all parts of it -- how it impacts education, how
it impacts the penal system, how it impacts treatment.''

Hanabusa noted that lawmakers this year approved a bill that goes after drug
houses through the nuisance abatement law. She said they now need to look at
other law enforcement avenues such as wire taps, sentencing and forfeitures
as well as the needs of the various state agencies.

''I believe that you have the commitment from the Senate and the House that
when this piece of legislation is introduced that you will have the
Legislature's answer to how we begin our battle against ice, not just talk,
not just meetings but actual laws, laws that will be enforceable,'' she
said.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Eric Hamakawa, D-Hilo-Glenwood, called
ice ''an equal opportunity destroyer that affects all segments of society.
It's ripping apart families, it's tearing apart our communities.''

Committee leaders wouldn't embrace Bunda's 2003 opening-day proposal for
mandatory drug testing in the public schools as part of the solution, but
agreed to include it in the committee's deliberations.

Hanabusa acknowledged she was ''very hesitant about the issue, but it is an
issue that we must address.''

''It's one that merits discussion and merits explorations, because you
cannot forget that it is affecting the youth, it is affecting the children
and we have to know how young it is that they are being exposed to this
problem,'' she said.

Hamakawa agreed.