DRUG TESTING

Weeding out drug users and drug pushers in our public schools is a critical
mission.

Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona spoke out yesterday, calling for drug testing
of some high school students, saying drugs are a major problem in Hawai'i's
schools, and the problem is impacting the education of all students.

Speaking before the Senate Education and Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs
committees, Aiona was speaking in favor of a bill alive in the Legislature
that would set up a pilot drug testing and rehabilitation program in at
least one public high school in each school complex area across the state.
Parents, or legal guardians, would have to sign off before the testing
could take place.

Opposing the measure are the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii and
the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii.

Schools Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto said her department backs the
concept of ridding the schools of drugs, but said the method would
discriminate against students pinpointed as drug users or dealers, because
they would be the only ones tested.

The idea of drug testing in public high schools began with remarks made by
Senate President Robert Bunda the day the current session of the
Legislature opened in January. Gov. Linda Lingle soon after came out for
Bunda's idea, and offered her own idea on how to implement the plan.

Beyond the give and take of the discussion in the Legislature is an article
on the "ice" or "meth" problem in Washington State that appeared in a
recent issue of the national young adult magazine Rolling Stone.

The lead in to the story states: "Cheap, easy to make and instantly
addictive, crystal meth is burning a hole through rural America."

The article points out the sad fact that the drug can be mixed up in a
garage, and doesn't need to be cultivated for months like marijuana, or
smuggled in from a foreign country, like heroin, or obtained with an
illegal prescription like many pills taken by drug addicts: "It is made
from legal and easily obtained ingredients, not opiates that must be
smuggled ashore."

Dr. Alex Stalcup, a national authority on addiction and treatment, is
quoted in the Rolling Stone article: "Once a drug bypasses the needle stage
and induces a giant rush, you have twin preconditions for an epidemic ....
Add to that the fact that it can be made at home, and we've gone from
epidemic to pandemic, meaning it's so easily and widely available that you
can't stop it."

The article also tells of the permanent damage of the drug on the brain,
and the future social problems that will cause, even beyond the huge and
growing number of children going into foster homes because their parents
are irresponsible ice addicts.

The real bad news for Kaua'i, and for Hawai'i, is that our state is a
national leader in ice use among its people and for the high percentage of
ice users among the total number of criminals arrested.

Action, real action, beyond political rhetoric is needed, especially among
the generation now in our public schools for they will be more susceptible
to this problem than those who have graduated during the beginning of this
drug epidemic, which began over the past ten years.