'ICE' DOCUMENTARY FILMED IN HILO

A Hawaii - based film company wants to bring the face of crystal
methamphetamine addiction to the small screen.

Edgy Lee of Filmworks Limited was filming segments Thursday on the Big
Island of the documentary, which is tentatively titled "ICE: Hawaii's Meth
Epidemic."

"We want to show the human costs not just the statistics," Lee said. "We
want to show how this problem affects us all."

While on the Big Island, Lee filmed homeless families at King's Landing in
Hilo, a Waimea resident who has seen first - hand the effects of "ice"
addiction and she also interviewed Mayor Harry Kim.

She said she would also be filming segments on Oahu and Maui and the
completed film would include interviews with government officials, law
enforcement officers, lawyers, doctors, school principals and social service
workers.

"You will meet mothers who gave birth to drug addicted babies and
grandmothers who buried addicted husbands and raised a teenager addicted to
ice," she added.

"It's a great example of how the economic depression in the state affects
different people in the same way," Lee said of the state's ice addiction
problem. "According to IHS (Institute for Human Services) statistics, 90 to
98 percent of the homeless families they're seeing, not including South
Pacific Islanders, are there because of ice addition."

The cost of supporting such families as well as other costs associated with
ice addiction - jail, rehabilitation, babies born to addicted mothers -
ultimately falls upon the tax payer, she said.

"You are paying for this," she said. "Even if you don't realize you are."

The film is scheduled to air 6:30 p.m. Sept. 25 on several local television
stations. Lee said a less graphic version will be distributed, as a learning
resource, to Hawaii schools.