CHASING 'HIGH' DEVOURS LIVES

Lawmakers Hear Narcotics Expert Describe Ice Addiction That's
'Better-Than-Sex'

HONOLULU -- There were colored pictures of the living dead, chronic users of
crystal methamphetamine with their gaunt bodies covered with sores and
dulled expressions showing minds diminished and confused by the highly
addictive drug known on Hawaii's streets as ''ice.''

It is the reality of a growing epidemic of ice use that begins with a
never-to-be-repeated, adrenaline-rushed euphoric ''better than sex'' high
and can end on the medical examiner's slab, according to a Power Point
presentation given Monday to state House Republicans.

''This is a really big problem,'' said Minority Leader Galen Fox,
R-Waikiki-Ala Moana, following the presentation by Keith Kamita,
administrator of the state's Narcotics Enforcement Division.

''Kamita identified us as the number one ice-problem state in the country,
the ice capital in the country,'' Fox said. ''We have to work on prevention,
treatment and incarceration. We have to step up our efforts in all the
areas.''

Aside from a long-term education program starting in the early grades about
the tragic consequences of ice use, lawmakers need to beef up enforcement
against drug manufacturers and pushers, Fox said.

The state needs to conform its search- and-seizure laws with federal laws so
evidence obtained in joint federal enforcement efforts can be used in state
courts, he said.

The state needs to impose restrictions of some currently over-the-counter
medications that are used in clandestine labs manufacturing ice and needs to
repeal the drug treatment alternative offered first-time major drug pushers,
Fox said.

The GOP House members invited Kamita to give a presentation on ice as a
prelude to Lt. Gov. James ''Duke'' Aiona's planned summer conference on the
ice problem and a House-Senate joint committee's plans for statewide
hearings on what leaders see as a crisis.

The presentation was sobering.

According to figures from the Office of the Medical Examiner on Oahu, deaths
among ice users have nearly quadrupled in the past decade with a record 62
last year, half of which involved overdoses and suicides.

Through April this year, there were 20 such deaths, the office said.

Hawaii hospitals in 2001 reported admitting 2,089 people for ice-related
treatment, and in 2002 the number ''has grown immensely,'' although the
exact figure is not yet available, Kamita said.

While methamphetamine in many Mainland states usually is snorted, ingested
or injected, in Hawaii the form of choice is ice, an 80 percent or greater
pure crystal form that is smoked and ''within seconds it hits the brain,''
he said.

Kamita handed around to lawmakers for their inspection sealed samples of ice
and the paraphernalia used to smoke it, followed by a demonstration of how a
user would inhale a hit of the white fumes given off when the rice-sized
crystal in the pipe is heated with a small butane torch.

He also gave details on the drug store and hardware shop ingredients and
processing chemicals for making ice, where they can be obtained and how they
are cooked in illegal labs set up in homes and apartments, creating
explosions, fire and deadly fumes hazard to the neighbors.

Hawaii's drug stores are required to alert authorities to big volume or
frequent purchases of cold medications containing pseudoephedrine, the key
ingredient, Kamita said.

''The first high is always the best . . . and the rest are chasing that
high,'' he said.

Ice users say after their first hit from ice, they ''just didn't quite get
that same high,'' Kamita said.

''Because of the high addictiveness of this drug, some people can be hooked
the first time. It's that feeling. It's better than sex. It's better than
anything they've tried,'' he said.

With continued use, the addict goes between supercharged highs and
depression lows, losing concern for appearance and health, becoming agitated
and eventually sinking to paranoid delusions and hallucinations that can
lead to bizarre behaviors including assaults on family members and innocent
bystanders, Kamita said.

Brain damage is among the consequences, he said.

''You're going to notice that in your care homes right now, you're going to
find that before where you would see people in their 70s and 80s, you're
going to see 30-year-olds in there because their body has taken such a toll
from this drug,'' Kamita said.

One of the main things in getting the ice epidemic under control is to
target the consumer, ''maybe through education, through threat of going to
jail,'' he said. ''By not doing anything, we're just going to cause more
problems.

''If you're not paying for enforcement, you're going to start paying for it
in treatment and for health care because this thing is going to ruin their
lives and their health,'' Kamita said.