THE POISONING OF PARADISE: CRYSTAL

METHAMPHETAMINE IN HAWAII

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

AUGUST 2, 2004

Serial No. 108–276

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

THE POISONING OF PARADISE: CRYSTAL METHAMPHETAMINE IN HAWAII

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THE POISONING OF PARADISE: CRYSTAL

METHAMPHETAMINE IN HAWAII

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

AUGUST 2, 2004

Serial No. 108–276

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

NICHOLAS COLEMAN, Professional Staff Member and Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on August 2, 2004 ............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Aiona, James R. ‘‘Duke’’, Lieutenant Governor, State of Hawaii ................. 15

Botti, Richard, executive director, Hawaii Food Industry Association ........ 71

Burnett, Larry D., Director, Hawaii High Intensity Drug Trafficking

Area ................................................................................................................ 20

Goodwin, Charles, Special Agent-in-Charge, Honolulu Division, Federal

Bureau of Investigation ................................................................................ 29

Grey, Briane, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Honolulu Office, Drug

Enforcement Administration ........................................................................ 39

Hashida, Grayson, Big Island Substance Abuse Council .............................. 89

Kamita, Keith, administrator, narcotics enforcement division, Hawaii

State Department of Public Safety .............................................................. 56

Kenoi, William P., executive assistant to mayor Harry Kim, county of

Hawaii ............................................................................................................ 55

Mahuna, Lawrence K., police chief, Hawaii County Police Department ..... 65

Salavea, Allen, Office of the Prosecuting Attorney with the Youth Builders ................................................................................................................... 91

Wasan, Jamal, Lokahi Treatment Program ................................................... 97

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Aiona, James R. ‘‘Duke’’, Lieutenant Governor, State of Hawaii, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 18

Botti, Richard, executive director, Hawaii Food Industry Association, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 73

Burnett, Larry D., Director, Hawaii High Intensity Drug Trafficking

Area, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 22

Case, Hon. Ed, a Representative in Congress from the State of Hawaii,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 11

Goodwin, Charles, Special Agent-in-Charge, Honolulu Division, Federal

Bureau of Investigation, prepared statement of ......................................... 32

Grey, Briane, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Honolulu Office, Drug

Enforcement Administration, prepared statement of ................................ 41

Kamita, Keith, administrator, narcotics enforcement division, Hawaii

State Department of Public Safety, prepared statement of ...................... 58

Mahuna, Lawrence K., police chief, Hawaii County Police Department,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 67

Salavea, Allen, Office of the Prosecuting Attorney with the Youth Builders, prepared statement of ........................................................................... 93

Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Indiana, prepared statement of ............................................................... 4

Wasan, Jamal, Lokahi Treatment Program, prepared statement of ........... 100

(1)

THE POISONING OF PARADISE: CRYSTAL

METHAMPHETAMINE IN HAWAII

MONDAY, AUGUST 2, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND

HUMAN RESOURCES, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Kailua-Kona, HI.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:20 a.m., at

Kealakehe Intermediate School, 74–5062 Onipaa Street, KailuaKona, HI, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee)

presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder and Case.

Staff present: Nicholas P. Coleman, professional staff member/

counsel; David Thomasson, congressional fellow; and Alena

Guagenti, legislative assistant.

Mr. SOUDER. Come to order. Good morning and thank you all for

coming. This hearing continues our subcommittee’s work on the

problem of methamphetamine abuse—a problem that is ravaging

the State of Hawaii and the entire Nation. I’d like to thank Congressman Ed Case for inviting us here to the Big Island, and for

his support for a bipartisan approach to confronting the meth epidemic.

In 2003, Congressman Case testified before our subcommittee

about the meth problem in Hawaii, and since then we have frequently discussed ways to help communities like this one to reduce

drug abuse.

Meth is one of the most powerful and dangerous drugs available.

A recent study of the effects of meth abuse using MRI scans of addicts revealed what one expert called a forest fire of brain damage.

Addicts’ brains lose 11 percent of the tissue in the limbic region,

controlling mood and emotion, and 8 percent of the hippocampus

region, responsible for forming new memories, comparable to the

brain deficits created by Alzheimer’s disease. Here in Hawaii the

form of meth called crystal or ice is increasing in popularity. It is

highly pure and extremely addictive.

Sadly, meth is also one of the easiest drugs to make. It can be

cooked using common household or agricultural chemicals and simple cold medicines, following recipes easily available on the Internet.

The meth here in Hawaii and other States comes from two major

sources of supply. First, meth comes from the so-called superlabs

in California and northern Mexico. By the end of the 1990’s these

superlabs produced over 70 percent of the Nation’s supply of meth.

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The superlabs are operated by large Mexican drug trafficking organizations that have used their established distribution and supply

networks to transport meth throughout the country.

The second major source of meth comes from small, local labs

that are generally unaffiliated with major trafficking organizations.

These labs have proliferated throughout the country. The total

amount of meth actually supplied by these labs is relatively small;

however, the environmental damage and health hazard they create

make them a serious problem for local communities, particularly

the State and local law enforcement agencies charged with the duty

to uncover and clean them up. In my home State of Indiana, for

example, more than 20 percent of the labs raided by police were

discovered only after they had exploded and started fires. Children

are often found at meth labs and have frequently suffered from severe health problems as a result of the hazardous chemicals used

in drug manufacturing.

Our hearings during the 107th Congress were mostly held in

Washington and looked at this problem from a national perspective. This year, however, we have taken a different approach. We

have instead been holding hearings in specific regions that have

been hardest-hit by meth trafficking and abuse. In February we

held a hearing in northeastern Indiana, followed by a hearing in

Detroit, Michigan, where large quantities of meth precursor chemicals like pseudoephedrine, which comes predominantly from Belgium and Holland, were being smuggled in until very recently. In

June we held a hearing in Bentonville, Arkansas where the use of

crystal meth is also growing rapidly.

Everywhere we go we hear about many of the same issues; the

environmental damage caused by the labs; the high costs and long

hours required for law enforcement agencies to process lab sites;

the heartbreaking stories of children exposed to drugs and chemicals and in need of emergency medical care and a safe place to go.

We hear about how addictive and deadly this drug is and how difficult it is to provide treatment and get meth users off of drugs.

The Bush administration, and especially the Office of National

Drug Control Policy [ONDCP], has pushed for strong and effective

action against meth abuse. We will need to take action at every

level, Federal, State, and local, to respond to this problem. Let me

briefly mention three issues that need to be addressed.

First, what do we need to do to reduce the supply of meth? In

the late 1990’s the Federal Government responded to the meth

problem both here and elsewhere with stricter laws against the

precursor chemical trade and tougher enforcement. The proliferation of smaller meth labs, however, means that we probably will

have to further restrict the ability of meth cooks to get precursor

chemicals—especially pseudoephedrine. Already many States have

acted to restrict sales of cold medicines and other pseudoephedrine

sources. A major question Congress must address is whether to

enact a national standard for these sales, and if so, what form

should it take?

Second, how should we deal with the environmental issues created in the wake of a meth lab seizure? We have to ensure that

the toxic chemicals produced and dumped by lab operators are

cleaned up, but these criminals rarely have enough money to comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:48 Mar 03, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98604.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
3

pensate the government for those costs. If we impose the costs on

unsuspecting landowners or landlords, however, we may give them

a disincentive to monitor their property and report suspicious activity to the police. In California, for example, some farmers prefer to

bury the remains of meth labs they find on their property because

if they report them, they will be liable for the clean-up costs. We

will have to carefully consider how we assign the responsibility for

the difficult and expensive task.

Finally, how do we get meth addicts into treatment and how do

we keep young people from starting on meth in the first place? We

can all agree that education and outreach are vital, but the hard

part is figuring out what works best. What works for marijuana,

ecstasy or cocaine may not work as well for meth.

This hearing will address these difficult questions and hopefully

bring us closer to some answers. Again, I thank Congressman Case

for inviting us here, and for the assistance that he and his staff

provided to our subcommittee in setting up this hearing. Our first

panel of witnesses begins with the distinguished Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii, James R. Duke Aiona who together with Governor

Linda Lingle has provided strong leadership in this State on drug

abuse issues.

We next welcome three witnesses who have joined us to discuss

the Federal Government’s response to the meth problem: Mr. Larry

D. Burnett, Director of the Hawaii High Intensity Drug Trafficking

Area [HIDTA], administered by the White House Office of National

Drug Control Policy [ONDCP]; Mr. Charles Goodwin, Special Agent

in Charge of the FBI’s Honolulu division; and Mr. Briane Grey, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Honolulu office.

At a hearing like this, it is vitally important for us to hear from

the State and local agencies forced to fight on the front lines

against meth and other illegal drugs. We welcome Mayor Harry

Kim of the County of Hawaii; Mr. Keith Kamita, Chief of the Narcotics Enforcement Division of the Hawaii County Police Department; and Mr. Richard Botti, Executive Director of the Hawaii

Food Industry Association.

We also welcome four witnesses whose work in the field of drug

treatment and prevention is of vital importance here in Hawaii: Dr.

Kevin Kunz of Kona Addiction Services; Mr. Wesley Margheim of

the Big Island Substance Abuse Council; Mr. Allen Salavea of the

Hawaii County Prosecutor’s Office’s Youth Builder’s Program; and

Dr. Jamal Wasan of the Lokahi Treatment Program. We thank everyone for taking the time to join us this morning and look forward

to your testimony. Now to Congressman Case for an opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]

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Mr. CASE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good morning and

aloha to all of you. It’s good to be back home on my home island.

Even under these difficult circumstances it’s good to be here and

to be with you and to address the crisis that we all face together.

I want to tell you just a little bit about what is actually going

on here today. This is the U.S. House Committee on Government

Reform’s Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and

Human Resources. Now, that’s a fancy way of saying that this is

the subcommittee, in all subcommittees in the U.S. House, is the

subcommittee responsible for criminal justice and drug policy. It’s

kuleana is all of our Federal Government’s law enforcement efforts,

especially as they deal with drugs. So we have right here the subcommittee, the place in the U.S. House that’s responsible for formulating overall policy.

And it’s a tremendous opportunity for us to say to the U.S.

House and to the U.S. Congress and to our Federal Government

both what our problems are, what our needs are, and what we offer

to the rest of our country much less to our State. And it’s a very

great pleasure for me to introduce my colleague Congressman

Mark Souder from Indiana. And I want to tell you just a little bit

about him so he’s more than just Mr. Chair here today.

Congressman Mark Souder was born and raised in Ft. Wayne,

Indiana. He is the chair of this subcommittee so he’s the guy, he’s

the guy that’s responsible for this stuff and is going to be making

decisions in conjunction with his colleagues. He still represents Indiana’s great Third District, which is headquartered right around

Ft. Wayne, so he’s born and raised and representing exactly the

district that he grew up in just like I am. He attended Notre Dame

so if you want to talk football with him, I’m sure he’d be happy to

do that.

He went to work in Congress just like me, caught the bug, was

a business person in his other life, and he is now finishing his 10th

year in the U.S. House and has been very, very involved in the

drug policy. You will see that in some of his questions, some of his

testimony, he knows what he’s talking about. He worked in this

area, he cares, he is the best that Congress has to offer to our country.

He also serves on some other committees as most of us in Congress do and he’s out here working in many different hats. Congressman Souder also serves on the Natural Resources Committee.

He has a special interest in our country’s national parks and national wildlife, fisheries and is on those subcommittees.

Yesterday, he spent the entire day touring our national parks

and national historic areas. I guess I can say this. He’s going up

and spending some time at Hawaii Volcanos National Park and

maybe, if there’s time, he’s going to spend some time in the rest

of our beautiful island.

He also serves on the U.S. House Select Committee on Homeland

Security which is a crucial topic of discussion in Congress today,

especially with the issuance of the 9/11 Commission report and the

President’s endorsement of many of his recommendations this

morning.

So he has spent time with our military, he’s spent time with

homeland security. He’s wearing many hats. Today he’s wearing

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the hat trying to help us with ice. So I really want to recognize and

send a very warm aloha to Congressman Souder. I do have a little

present for him here and he can open it later, but it’s a very nice

aloha shirt to go with the one he has on right here for the remainder of his time out here in Hawaii. Thank you very much, Congressman.

I also want to recognize the ranking minority member on the

subcommittee Elijah Cummings of Maryland who has demonstrated an equal interest in this and this is a bi-partisan/nonpartisan effort. You know ice and other drugs don’t care what party

you’re in. They don’t care what district you represent, from whatever parties. We all work together on this.

Thank you very much, Chairman Souder.

On behalf of all of my over 600,000 constituents of Hawaii’s great

Second Congressional District, and for all of the people of Hawaii,

I am especially pleased that my home island of Hawaii is hosting

this hearing today.

We in Hawaii share many of the same concerns as others in our

Nation in regard to the urgent need to support drug control, education, prevention, and treatment efforts, especially those dealing

directly with the scourge of crystal methamphetamine or ice. However, our geographic isolation, not only from the contiguous United

States, but also just in terms of the isolation of the ‘‘Neighbor Islands’’ from Oahu, as well as a number of other unique factors, not

the least of which are our ethnic and cultural diversity, create

unique challenges that we need to address here. So we deal with

the big picture of ice with everybody else in our country, but we

also deal with unique circumstances that we face right here.

Of course, general drug abuse has plagued many of our communities for decades. And to target what is needed to prevent this

abuse now and in the future, we have to first understand what

causes it and then focus our efforts on overcoming those causes.

And uniquely, it is, in fact, up to our Federal Government to take

the lead on this issue as it is the only effective entity with the resources and the scope and ability to coordinate the indispensable

multi-pronged approach to stamping out drug abuse. So I commend

this subcommittee for taking the lead.

Let’s be clear first. We know that the roots of drug abuse lie

largely where educational and economic opportunity are lacking

and the social and community fabric are torn. Thus, in the big picture and long term, our best overall efforts to stamp out drug

abuse lie in fixing our economies and improving our schools and

strengthening our families and communities.

But where drug abuse has taken hold there are four basic causes.

First, insufficient education of our young people on the danger of

drugs before they start. Second, law enforcement’s inability, often

because of lack of resources to catch, prosecute, and lock up the

worst offenders, the dealers and the manufacturers. Third, a community’s lack of community-wide involvement in prevention and

elimination. We cannot do this alone. It takes a community. And

fourth, a lack of sufficient social local rehabilitation programs to

give abusers a second chance and bring them back into society. If

we do not rehabilitate abusers, keep up with them, we keep on creating the significant consequences of ice abuse.

9

All of this is true in spades with the drug we face most directly

and critically today, ice. It is truly poisoning paradise as we know

it.

Hawaii was one of the first places in our country where the drug

made its appearance back in the mid 1980’s so it is not a new drug

here. Due to its highly addictive properties, as it is almost 90 percent pure in this form, Hawaii now has the Nation’s highest rate

of adults who have tried ice. There are many other statistics and

they’re in my testimony, but we can see the link between ice and

homicides, ice and child abuse, ice and property crime. Perhaps one

of the most alarming statistics is the reach of ice down to our

young people.

I spent time with the police, local police, on the Island of Lanai,

just three, 4 days ago. What I try to do is get out and spend time.

And we were hanging out at the end of the day, talking on the

front porch of the Island of Lanai’s police station which is about the

size of one-fifth of this room.

And basically, they said they’ve seen it down to 12-year-olds on

the Island of Lanai. That is unbelievable.

So this scourge is an absolute top priority in Hawaii’s immediate

drug elimination efforts. On education, our schools and communities are increasingly focusing on working with our youth to show

the devastation that ice can cause and is causing. Our law enforcement community is starting to focus much more on attacking ice

dealers. All of our needs now include some elements of rehabilitation.

Most encouraging, we now see our communities standing up and

saying no to ice. This is happening on all of our islands. Kahaluu

on the Island of Oahu was the first community to hold ice breaker

meetings, a drug response plan formed on the county of Kauai to

implement a community-wide approach, the Coalition for a DrugFree Lanai with its recent second year grant from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Over in Wailuku on Maui, Thursday we

will be visiting a fantastic effort over there to take on ice at the

community level.

And here on the Big Island Mayor Kim, with his great assistant,

Billy Kenoi, who is here with us today spearheaded a unique coordinated islandwide attack on ice. And we see many of our communities sign waving on Hugs Not Drugs. That’s what it’s going to

take, but we do need much more.

The FBI and the DEA who are with us today and care very much

about this need, I believe, to station a permanent agent on each of

our counties on the ground where we do not have a Federal presence in order to focus Federal law enforcement efforts on ice.

With our congressional delegation, we’ve advocated for increased

funding for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area which we will

hear from today. The Weed and Seed Program is so successful

throughout our country and through the First Congressional District. And general coordination is always welcome.

To sum up, we in Hawaii, one of the hardest hit areas of our

country with this incredible ice epidemic do, in fact, face a crisis.

We have the will to address it, but we need help from our Federal

Government. We need more Federal law enforcement at the county

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and local level. We need preventative education, and we need effective rehabilitation.

Chair Souder, I thank you, again, for bringing the subcommittee

here. I thank all of the witnesses for your participation. I thank the

audience for your participation and for many of you in the audience, in fact, all of you for your hard work, we will, in fact, accomplish this together. Mahalo.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Ed Case follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Let me explain a little bit about the process of how

we do our hearings. As Congressman Case mentioned, this is a

part of the Government Reform Oversight, which is historically

what’s known as the Oversight Committee. We’ve changed the

name of the reform because when we do oversight, it isn’t just to

have a hearing. It’s trying to figure out what we’re going to change

in the administrative capacity.

What’s unusual about this subcommittee is we also have authorization over narcotics issues including the Drug Czar’s office, and

so we need both legislative and oversight and also share the speakers drug task force.

Each witness will have 5 minutes.

We have a light that’s supposed to work that will be green for

four, yellow for one, red a little more generous, meaning another

60 seconds to a few minutes, if your statement doesn’t work within

the 5 minutes. It gives us a chance to ask questions, get some

interaction.

Each witness, as you’ll hear when we go through the procedures,

has the ability to submit additional information. We want anything

you make a reference to to get into the hearing record because ultimately this will be a hearing book. And in the process of doing this,

there is a series of hearings in Washington and California and

other places over the last couple years.

People can look through it and say, OK, how are they tackling

the meth issue and what information is there. So if you refer to

something, it will be good to get a copy of it later to put into the

hearing record. Also, we may submit additional questions as we review it and as we look at some things to you to put into the hearing record. If any individuals have something they want to submit,

either submit to our staff here today or Congressman Case’s office,

we can get that into the record as well.

Let me first go to procedural matters. I ask consent that all

Members have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and

questions to the hearing director. Any answers to written questions

provided by the witnesses are also included in the record. No objections, so ordered.

Second, I ask that all Members present be permitted to participate in the hearing. Without objection, so ordered. Now, because

we’re an oversight committee, the oversight being Congress, we’re

the only one that actually swears in its witnesses. Historically, we

haven’t had to do much with that, but we had a few hearings

where, in fact, we did.

This committee has heard everything from Whitewater to China

investigations to Waco to all of those kind of things, and it’s important that each witness understands that it’s not just testifying, this

is actually oversight to see the laws are there so we swear in each

witness. So if you would each raise your right hand.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative. We appreciate your willingness to come

and we’re going to start with the distinguished Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii, the Honorable James Aiona, and we appreciate

your long-time leadership.

15

STATEMENT OF JAMES R. ‘‘DUKE’’ AIONA, LIEUTENANT

GOVERNOR, STATE OF HAWAII

Mr. AIONA. Thank you, Chairman Souder, and of course, Congressman Case for this opportunity to address you on this matter.

I have submitted testimony in this case and if you don’t mind, I’m

going to supplement that. I’m not going to read my testimony. I’m

going to supplement it.

I do want to give you a little perspective, and for the record, my

background, so you’ll understand where I’m coming from when I

make my comments.

First of all, I’m a father of four children. My oldest is 21, my

youngest is 12. I’ve been a coach in the community, both on the

high school level and on the youth level for the past 20, 25 years.

I was a prosecutor when I first came out of law school in 1980

and I was a prosecutor in the career criminal unit for about 3

years. I then went to the city Attorney’s Office. Then in 1990 I was

appointed to the Family Court bench and served for about 21⁄2

years, was elevated to the Circuit Court bench and served on the

criminal calendar for about 4 years and about 11⁄2 to 2 years of that

I was the first administrative judge to the Drug Court Program

here in Hawaii.

I then went back to Family Court and I’ve been a lifelong resident, except for my studies up in Stockton, California, for all of my

life. So I think I understand the community and where we’re at at

this point in time in regards to this problem methamphetamine.

When I was a prosecutor in 1980, methamphetamine was first

making its move into the island, so to speak, in a powder form

known as crank. And subsequently, it has now materialized into

what we now call ice or ‘‘batu’’ and there are many names for its

form right now.

But what I have seen is I have seen the proliferation of it, not

only in the courtroom, but also in the community, I think, simply,

because of a couple of things.

First and foremost in the 1980’s when cocaine was the No. 1 drug

of choice in Hawaii, 1970’s and 1980’s, we saw what law enforcement did in choking off the supply, not necessarily arresting people

and putting them in jail and making that a deterrent, but basically

attacking the supply. And it really choked it out to a significant degree. And this same high that people had been getting in cocaine

they were now seeing it happen in methamphetamine and I saw

the proliferation happen.

I think as a result of the fact that methamphetamine is something that’s manufactured, it’s very difficult to eradicate simply by

attacking the supply. So as such, what I’ve seen in the courtroom

has been devastating. As you stated and as Congressman Case

stated, we’ve seen the devastation of families and children and everything else that could possibly happen.

I think it all lined up in the stars for me. It was truly God’s

blessing that I was elected to this office and as such Governor

Lingle has charged me with the task of addressing this issue. And

as such what we did repeatedly was we went out to the communities to get their input. And what really happened with that was

basically two-fold. At that point in time when we got elected back

16

in 2002, I think the community at that point in time had really

seen enough of what was happening with methamphetamine.

So the level of awareness and making it known to everyone in

the community had risen to, I would say, beyond belief. And we

had community meetings, as Congressman Case noted, in certain

communities where they would go out and wave signs, they had

rallies, etc., just kind of slow hauled to approaching the whole island.

So we went out to the community, the administration did, in talk

story events such as this, and just got feedback from them. And

then in September last year we had for the first time ever what

we called a Drug Summit in which we brought as many participants as possible in the provider field, in law enforcement, in the

community, etc., to basically come up with some recommendations

that they felt were needed. And we adopted at that point in time

a drug control strategy which basically is similar to the national

policy which is prevention and intervention. So we basically adopted that, we got the recommendations from the community and

right now we are in the middle of our working groups, we’re calling

them ad hoc committees, in which they are developing action plans

for the prevention, for treatment, for law enforcement, for what we

call community mobilization and also a coordinating branch.

Now, that’s very important because probably the biggest feedback we got from the community was the fact that there was a lack

of collaboration and coordination amongst our various, not only

State agencies but also our Federal agencies. People were duplicating services, there were gaps in the services, money was being ineffectively used and deficiently used. And so as such a big recommendation was to have some kind of coordinating committee or

person to deal with all of these issues. And we did that in January

of this year by appointing what we’ve called a drug liaison in the

Lt. Governor’s office.

So we are on the verge right now of basically bringing together

all of the people I had mentioned, the ad hoc committees, with

their—what we’re calling, their action plans and having them submitted to us for implementation.

I would also note that what had happened is we’ve stepped up

our efforts with regards to youth programs. We’ve stepped up our

efforts with our underage drinking because we really believe that

leads to it. We’ve stepped up our efforts in regards to educating not

only our children but also the public.

I think you’re going to hear testimony of how our Narcotics Enforcement Division has gone out and educated a lot of people in regards to the meth labs and the effect that it has and the harm it

has done in the community. And so what we’ve done is we’ve really

brought it out.

I’ve been fortunate to be appointed to the National Advisory

Committee of SAMHSA, which you well know has been a great

partner with us. They have provided technical assistance at almost

every request that we’ve made, whether it be in grants, whether

it be in setting up these ad hoc committees that we’ve now set up.

During our Summit they’ve given us some support in regards to

educating our public with meth labs and I can’t say enough what

SAMHSA has done for us.

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I do want to put a plug in, though, for something that is a tremendous breakthrough in regards to treatment; and that is this

new initiative called Access to Recovery. I know that the Bush administration had requested about $200,000,000 and Congress had

only appropriated $100,000,000. Nevertheless, I think it’s something that needs to be looked at very carefully. I can see nothing

but good things coming out of it, and I really hope that Congress

when that budget comes up again, that they will give them a real

hard look and really support that effort.

If you talk to the people in the community, people in the profession, I should say, they’re going to tell you that Access to Recovery

really is revolutionary in regards to what it’s going to do and what

SAMHSA is doing. SAMHSA is, and I agree wholeheartedly with

what they’re doing, they are now basically going out and coordinating with the States, going from the executive office, and not putting

money out there for various treatment programs, but more or less

building systems, working the interagency relationships between

service providers, nonprofits and then, of course, on the law enforcement side working it that route.

At our last council meeting we found out that they have now

partnered with various branches within the Federal Government

which would includes ONDCP, Justice, Department of Health and

Human Services.

I know I’ve gone over my time, I thank you very much, and, of

course, I’m open for questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Aiona follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Second witness will be Mr. Burnett,

head of the HIDTA Hawaii.

STATEMENT OF LARRY D. BURNETT, DIRECTOR, HAWAII HIGH

INTENSITY DRUG TRAFFICKING AREA

Mr. BURNETT. Chairman Souder, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize you and Congressman Case for your outstanding work in the area of drug law enforcement. As HIDTA director,

I’ve had the opportunity to work with you and your staffs on drug

issues, both, domestically and internationally.

You’re untiring efforts are greatly appreciated.

The commitment of Congressman Case to the methamphetamine

epidemic in Hawaii is evident today by holding this hearing in your

home State. Congratulations.

Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned in my written statement, the

State of Hawaii and U.S. territories of the Pacific are currently

under attack from crystal methamphetamine, commonly called ice.

The rampant abuse of crystal methamphetamine along with the violence and dangers associated with the drug is the single most significant drug problem affecting the State. That’s a point that cannot be overemphasized.

As you’re aware, based on the crystal methamphetamine epidemic and other criteria, Hawaii was designated a HIDTA in 1999.

HIDTA designation brings with it and it provides a catalyst for

genuine coordination and cooperation among Hawaii’s law enforcement community. Resources donated by participating agencies are

formed into investigation and interdiction strike forces, intelligence

gathering groups, and support initiatives. By sharing strategic and

tactical information, the Hawaii HIDTA provides a comprehensive

response to illicit drug activity by bringing together all available

law enforcement resources in a united front.

For our purposes here today Hawaii’s drug abuse problem can be

categorized probably in three tiers and that’s how HIDTA looks at

it. In the first tier are the two drugs that are causing the most serious problems, that’s crystal methamphetamine and marijuana. Arrest and seizure data for both these drugs indicate that availability

is high. Demand data suggests that use of both drugs, along with

the consequences of that use, is high and increasing.

The second-tier drugs are cocaine, which is usually crack cocaine

here, and heroin.

Cocaine-related arrests and seizures are on an upswing but demand data suggests the opposite, the declining prevalence and consequences of use. At the same time heroin distribution and abuse

appears to be diminishing as indicated by the declines in arrests,

seizures, and reports that we see.

And the third tier are drugs such as MDMA, GHB, steroids, ecstasy, and diverted pharmaceuticals. They are available and

abused in Hawaii but to a much lesser extent. The focus of thirdtier drugs appears to be among young party club goers and the

younger members of our military.

Hawaii is both a destination and transiting point for the West

Coast, the mainland United States, Canada, Mexico, and Asia. Hawaii is also a source of high potency marijuana to the U.S. mainland, Canada, and, even to a lesser extent, for Mexico.

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International and local drug trafficking organizations have ample

opportunity to traffic drugs to, through, and from the area because

of Hawaii’s high volume of international and domestic air and sea

traffic. The Hawaii HIDTA’s primary goal is to disrupt and dismantle these organizations.

For fiscal year 2005 law enforcement organizations will contribute a total of 311 full- and part-time law enforcement personnel to

this effort. I would also like to comment that regrettably there remain at this time legal and legislative barriers that sometimes impede the ability of law enforcement to effectively combat the drug

problem. For example, evidence obtained from Federal wiretap and

consensual encounters remain, at this time, inadmissible in Hawaii

courts, in the State courts. As a result many lower level drug distributors who do not meet Federal guidelines, they go unprosecuted

in the State system. It is not uncommon to find individuals with

30-plus arrests still free on the streets.

Our outlook, I think you will find that coordination and cooperation among Hawaii’s law enforcement agencies is at an all time

high. Hawaii remains a target rich environment. We believe the

maritime seizures of illicit drugs will increase with the implementation of the Maritime Transportation Security Act. And although

its primary purpose is to counter terrorism, it will have a fall-out

effect on the drugs.

We are hopeful that proposed legislation will be enacted to bring

State wiretap laws into line with the rest of the country. The Hawaii HIDTA’s and its participating member agencies will continue

to devote resources to identify, investigate, disrupt, and dismantle

the organizations responsible for the spread of methamphetamine

across Hawaii and our country.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify before the subcommittee. I will be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Burnett follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Our next witness is Mr.

Charles Goodwin, special agent-in-charge, Honolulu office, for the

FBI.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES GOODWIN, SPECIAL AGENT-INCHARGE, HONOLULU DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Mr. GOODWIN. Good morning, Chairman Souder, Congressman

Case. Thank you for inviting here today to speak to you on the

problem of crystal methamphetamine trafficking and abuse here in

Hawaii.

I also appreciate the opportunity to comment on the FBI’s efforts

in partnership with other Federal Government agencies and State

and local authorities to address the battle against drugs and ice

here in Hawaii.

First, I want to emphasize that the FBI remains committed to

the fight against illegal drugs in Hawaii and working with you to

put the drug trafficking organizations out of business. As you’re all

aware, though, through law enforcement reports and the news

media, ice continues to rank as the most widely abused illicit drug

in Hawaii. Much of the ice abuse in Hawaii is attributed to the

drug trafficking organizations which have strong ties to both domestic and international organized crime enterprises.

Although the FBI Honolulu Division continues to investigate

drug trafficking organizations using the Enterprise Theory of Investigation; that is, to seek the dismantlement of the entire criminal organization and not just individual members, we are doing so

with a lot less manpower resources.

After September 11, 2001 the FBI with the blessing of Congress

reallocated several hundred Special Agents working drug investigations to counterterrorism and other investigative programs.

This decision was done clearly out of necessity and it provided

the Counterterrorism Program with some of the best investigators

in the FBI. In response to this move, the FBI Drug Program bolstered its presence in Hawaii on the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and

other task forces as a force-multiplier.

Part of the reasoning behind the reallocation of FBI drug investigative resources was the realization that there are thousands of

other highly committed, qualified, experienced State and local law

enforcement officials engaged in drug investigations. At the Federal

level, the DEA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, IRS, ATF,

U.S. Coast Guard are all valuable assets in the war on drugs.

The FBI, however, is not abdicating its commitment to drug investigations. In the meantime the FBI continues to concentrate the

vast majority of our FBI drug agents on dismantling the largest

drug trafficking organization and criminal enterprises, those identified by the Attorney General’s list of 41 Consolidated Priority Organization Targets. We also remain committed to the national programs, OCDETF and HIDTA, as well as major joint intelligence efforts in Hawaii. Bottom line, the FBI remains committed to working with you in this fight against illegal drugs.

Ice is the drug of choice in Hawaii. The sale and use and transportation of ice in Hawaii has had a devastating impact on all of

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Hawaiian society. As we are acutely aware, ice tears away at the

inner fabric of Hawaii. It brings violence to our streets, wastes

young lives, wreaks havoc on families, saps millions of dollars from

our economy, and drains the resources of our criminal justice and

health care systems.

Drugs such as ice make criminal enterprises across the country

and around the world richer, stronger, and more formidable.

The specific statistics on how crystal methamphetamine affects

the overall crime issues is staggering. An estimated 90 percent of

property crime in Hawaii is believed to be drug-related. In addition, many homicides and other violent crimes, including hostage

situations, have been associated with ice. In 2002, U.S. Attorney,

Ed Kubo stated that ice had been associated with over 90 percent

of the confirmed child abuse cases. Recently, news articles in Hawaii have reported that assaults on police officers have increased

fivefold over the past 5 years and that the violence associated with

ice abuse is a contributing factor to that increase.

The widespread use of ice has also deeply hurt the economy and

social image of Hawaii. Several studies done by universities have

reported that Hawaii authorities have spent close to half a billion

dollars per year on corrections, education, and counselling, and

other programs relative to the ice problem. There are as many as

30,000 ice users in Hawaii who spend between $540 million to $1.8

billion annually on their habits. Many researchers also believe the

manufacturing and usage of ice is having a detrimental effect on

the environment.

Here in Hawaii the problems with ice transcends beyond the typical street dealers. The FBI, in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, has determined that the ice problem extends to

international boundaries and have strong organized crime ties. In

Hawaii, traditional Asian organized crime organizations distribute

ice. Today, Mexican drug trafficking organizations and other criminal organizations are becoming increasingly more involved in the

production and distribution of ice.

In fact, our intelligence indicates that most of the ice in Hawaii

appears to be produced in Mexico and California. Mexican drug

trafficking organizations transport ice to Honolulu, Maui, and other

Hawaiian counties from California and to a lesser extent, Las

Vegas. Some Asian trafficking organizations, such as Filipino, Vietnamese, and Korean organizations transport ice to Hawaii via Canada and California to avoid potential customs and border patrol inspections conducted at Hawaii ports of entry such as the Honolulu

International Airport. Hawaii law enforcement estimates a large

percentage of the ice in Hawaii is smuggled through the airport via

mailed parcels and couriers on commercial flights. We’ve also intercepted shipments arriving by shipping containers from the mainland which are not searched.

I’m going to jump ahead here because I’ve clearly run out of my

time, but the main thing the FBI, the strategies that we use to

fight drugs here in Hawaii, continue to direct appropriate investigative and analytical resources to address the threats posed by

priority targets; encourage the use of Title IIIs, criminal pen registers, and subpoenas; encourage the use of complex undercover operations; maximize the use of specialized drug intelligence sources

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to fully develop investigations of drug trafficking enterprises; consult with respective counterparts in DEA to confirm investigative

efforts are not being duplicated and to identify opportunities for

joint initiatives and investigations.

We want to ensure that appropriate deconfliction is shared

through data bases; ensure initiation and coordination of multi-jurisdictional investigations; ensure investigations are initiated

against priority targets posing the greatest threat to the Honolulu

Division and Hawaii which are multi-jurisdictional, regional, and

national significance. We want to actively participate in ad hoc

task forces such as HIDTA initiatives. And with that I’ll conclude

my testimony and certainly be available for questioning.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goodwin follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Our last witness on the first

panel is Mr. Briane Grey, Special Agent in Charge, Honolulu Office, Los Angeles Field Division of DEA.

STATEMENT OF BRIANE GREY, ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN

CHARGE, HONOLULU OFFICE, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

Mr. GREY. Chairman Souder, Congressman Case, and distinguished members of the subcommittee, it is a pleasure to appear

before you today. On behalf of the DEA Administrator Karen P.

Tandy and Los Angeles Field Division Special Agent in Charge Stephen C. Delgado, I would like to thank this subcommittee for your

continued support of the DEA and its mission.

While Hawaii has always been viewed as a paradise destination,

it currently has the distinction of being No. 1 per capita for crystal

methamphetamine use in the United States. The spread of crystal

methamphetamine use has long been a problem for the Hawaiian

islands and the user population continues to grow due to its highly

addictive nature.

Crystal methamphetamine, commonly known as ice, is the No. 1

drug threat in Hawaii, Guam, and Saipan. In the last 2 years Hawaii has seen a significant increase in the amount of crystal methamphetamine being distributed and seized.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services

Administration’s Treatment Episode Data Sets, treatment admissions for methamphetamine abuse in Hawaii increased from 1,243

in 1998 to 2,238 in 2002. This rate has steadily increased. In 2003,

Hawaii was the only State to have crystal methamphetamine treatment admissions exceed alcohol abuse treatment admissions.

In Hawaii ice abusers have been linked to violent crimes including child abuse, hostage situations, and homicides. Ice abusers are

also linked to Hawaii’s high property crime rate which is one of the

worst in the Nation. Methamphetamine and the violence associated

with the drug threaten the well-being of all of Hawaii’s citizens,

continue to challenge all law enforcement, health care, and social

services entities within the State. This epidemic is fueled by the

ever increasing number of drug trafficking organizations associated

with larger organizations in Mexico and the U.S. West Coast.

Ice production and distribution first appeared in Hawaii in 1985

and is associated with Asian drug trafficking organizations. To

avoid Hawaii’s strict U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspections, Asian organizations routinely transported drugs from source

countries such as Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines through

Canada to Hawaii via California. In the 1990’s the trend shifted.

Mexican organizations became the principal ice suppliers in Hawaii.

The DEA has recently and successfully emphasized investigations targeting the flow of precursor chemicals used to produce

methamphetamine. Due to the successes of OCDETF investigations

Operations Mountain Express III and Northern Star between 2002

and 2003, U.S. importation of bulk pseudoephedrine from Canada

dramatically dropped. These enforcement successes at the Northern

border have forced traffickers to import pseudoephedrine to Mexico

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from Hong Kong, increased methamphetamine manufacturing in

Mexico.

Presently, Mexican organizations are producing ice in Mexico,

California, and southwestern States and use their established

transportation networks to distribute the drug throughout the

United States and the Hawaiian islands. Clandestine superlabs located in Mexico and the southwestern United States are responsible for most of the ice distributed in Hawaii.

Through DEA’s State and Local Task Force Program and the

HIDTA program, the DEA Honolulu District Office has joined

forces with our State and local partners to address methamphetamine-related trends from large Mexican trafficking organizations

down to small-time producers operating out of their homes. In

March 2004, an investigation with the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, the DEA Airport Task Force seized 20 pounds of

crystal methamphetamine concealed inside aluminum pipes sent

from an individual in Mexico to Honolulu, as well as $200,000 in

proceeds. At the other end of the chain, in February 2004, the Maui

Post of Duty arrested an individual with 15 grams of ice who was

prosecuted federally who allegedly supplied high school students

and was the source for other dealers on Lanai since July 2003.

The Honolulu District Office has DEA Task Forces in Maui and

Hilo and at the Honolulu Airport. This team effort has led to significant investigations allowing law enforcement to jointly attack

crystal methamphetamine trafficking.

A joint investigation between the DEA and Honolulu Office of

Immigration and Customs Enforcement led to the February seizure

of five gallons of red phosphorous in the possession of a Canadian

citizen. The subsequent investigation identified the individual as a

methamphetamine chemist who was responsible for the distribution of the approximately 30 to 40 pounds of ice per month in 2002

and early 2003. This investigation eliminated a clandestine manufacturing operation based in Canada.

More recently, the DEA with State and local officers seized 1.8

kilograms of ice shipped from California to Kihei, Maui and 1.44

kilograms of ice from two individuals arriving in Honolulu from

Las Vegas, Nevada. Our Guam office also seized 200 grams of liquid methamphetamine sent from the Philippines to Guam.

The DEA is committed to protecting the American public’s safety

from the serious consequences resulting from the methamphetamine threat. The DEA has had a significant impact on the trafficking of precursor chemicals and continues to target Mexican trafficking organizations controlling the majority of the methamphetamine produced and distributed in our country.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify before the subcommittee today. I will be happy to answer any questions at the

appropriate time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Grey follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. I thank you each for your testimony. Let me say

that it’s unusual; I’ve never done this with a lei before, let alone

without a tie. I appreciate Congressman Case because he wore a

lei, actually, when he testified in front of the committee in Washington. I just want everybody back in Hawaii to know that he’s

very consistent in making statements for his home State and his

concern on this issue and I appreciate it.

There are a number of things in your testimony that are dramatically different than what we’ve heard elsewhere. I want to

make sure that I highlight some of these, both FBI, DEA, and I

know from talking to HIDTA that you’ve said this, too, but I want

to highlight this, 90 percent of property crime is believed to be drug

related, 90 percent of child abuse, I believe you said Mr. Goodwin,

was methamphetamine, crystal methamphetamine related, assaults

on police officers increased fivefold over the last 5 years.

So am I taking from that the associated crime and violence from

meth, even if meth has been a historic problem, has jumped?

Mr. GOODWIN. I think that’s a fair assumption and I think it’s

pretty well based on both reports from the media and police reports. The incident of violent crimes actually in Hawaii is, we believe, down somewhat. But those assaults, for instance, aggravated

assault, assaults on police officers and those personal types of

crimes and certainly property crime has continued to be on the

rise, and we do believe it’s directly attributed to the methamphetamine problem.

Mr. AIONA. As far as the child welfare cases and our collection

of the statistics on the State level, I can’t say that we have had the

best collection system of data available. I think the number that

you got is an estimate based on field interviews and response from

social workers who are in the field and on the line and reporting

back as to what they’ve encountered most recently. I think that’s

within the past few years. And I think it’s a good assessment. I

don’t know if it’s accurate, but I wouldn’t say that’s——

Mr. SOUDER. Hard.

Mr. AIONA. Yeah, hard facts.

Mr. SOUDER. Now, when you were in Family Court, what we’ve

heard around the country is anywhere from 60 to 85 percent of all

court cases in crime has some nexus with marijuana, alcohol, usually poly users and then to meth, which would include child support enforcement, divorce cases, and spouse abuse.

Is that true here as well? Is it usually poly drug, and here what

seems to be more of a relationship with crystal meth is a higher

percentage?

Mr. AIONA. Again, I don’t have any hard data on that, but from

my experience I would agree with that wholeheartedly, poly substance or multi substance abuse, you’re correct. In Drug Court

that’s all I saw. Methamphetamine was usually the drug of choice,

it usually was, but they’d mix it with marijuana and alcohol and

cocaine and everything else you can imagine, so yes, that’s an accurate statement.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Burnett, when we talked the other day, one of

the things that we were discussing was how the relationship of

marijuana to some degree alcohol with crystal methamphetamine

and the coming down process.

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Could you describe that, somebody maybe high on ice and then

come down with marijuana?

Mr. BURNETT. I assume you’re speaking of the tweaking process?

Mr. SOUDER. Right.

Mr. BURNETT. When individuals get high on ice, especially smoking in the form that we do here in Hawaii, it’s an immediate rush

and it’s an extremely high high and a prolonged high. It lasts for

a long time. But in order to maintain that, there is always the opposite side, like anything else, and it’s called tweaking where you

start to twitch and go into a deep depression.

And with ice, and that’s part of the problem with violence that

is associated with it, you go into a real deep depression, emotionally and physically. And what we see here is that they use marijuana and other drugs in order to mitigate that and try and even

out that experience and try to take the edge off of the depression.

Mr. SOUDER. Have any of you seen any ice users who didn’t use

marijuana and/or alcohol.

Mr. BURNETT. I’m sure that there is somewhere. What we normally say with our statistics is that almost everybody that tests

positive, and that’s 40 percent of the males that are picked up for

any crime in the State, that’s the highest in the Nation, 40 percent

test positive for meth. And when they test positive for meth, they

are poly drug users. It’s usually accompanied by alcohol and marijuana.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to pursue another round of questions before

I go to Mr. Case. I want to pursue the Canada question a little bit.

First off, one other thing I want to note for the record is several

of you said, and I thought it was very helpful to understand, the

historic ties to Asia which is the way we normally think of this, it

would have not been self evident that Mexican drug trafficking organizations are taking over the meth in Hawaii. Walking around

and talking to people you would not assume that’s your major challenge.

Also, for the record, you’re saying that there are fewer meth labs

because normally in all the other States and we’re talking Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana which are the five

highest, we’re talking labs, even though we have these superlabs

in California, and here you’re basically talking about it coming in

and then being turned into crystal methamphetamine. Is that correct?

Could you explain to me as someone who sits both on Border

Committee on Homeland Security and has oversight here and we

spent a couple years working on border issues, what do you mean

by this statement?

And you made this Mr. Goodwin and Mr. Grey made a similar

and actually, even more specific statement about how the meth,

crystal meth, comes in through Canada sometimes through California and you made the statement to avoid strict custom and border

patrol inspections conducted in the Hawaii ports of entry?

And I believe you had a case, Mr. Grey, where you talked about

a recent one where a person came in, Canadian citizen came in

with five gallons. That wasn’t UPS or Fed Ex which most of them

are, but could you describe what you mean by they can get in

through Canada easier than Hawaii?

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Mr. GOODWIN. First of all, we mentioned that we know the large

quantities of drugs, first of all, come through Mexico and so they’ll

move through Mexico to the West Coast and then can be

transhipped to Hawaii.

We also see precursors coming out of Asia as well. And in both

cases they can ship product to Canada and then move it over land

to California or Nevada to move it to Hawaii. And coming from the

West Coast to Hawaii, they’re not subject to customs inspection.

Mr. SOUDER. Even from Canada.

Mr. GOODWIN. Well, if they tranship it from Canada to Nevada,

for instance, or California, and then ship it out, then it doesn’t get

looked at coming from the West Coast, the United States, to Hawaii. Now, in theory you would look at it between Canada and the

United States, but the reality there is it’s pretty much an open border.

I’d like to also just mention as we talk about more and more

methamphetamine produced in the United States. But also being

produced in big quantities in Mexico, moved to the West Coast and

transhipped. The other thing we’re starting to see is—we’ve always

seen precursors coming from the Far East, but just recently, for instance, the Australian Federal Police brought a case to us. It was

a superlab that they had interdicted in Fiji and it looked like a

portable cement mixer. It was about three stories high and was capable of producing $1 billion a year worth of methamphetamine.

Now, in that particular case it was destined primarily for Australia and New Zealand and other Pacific Rim countries. But once

something like that is established there, moved through Guam and

Saipan, it would be pretty easy to ship it to Hawaii as well.

Mr. SOUDER. I’m going to come back for another round on the

Asia side, but I want to do one more thing coming from our mainland West Coast this direction. One of the things we documented

over and over, we’re having a huge problem with hydroponic, we’ll

talk about marijuana in just a minute, but the cocaine coming up

from Columbia and then meth going up California, across the

Washington border swapping in British Columbia, then coming

down and they get their cocaine, heroin coming north bringing the

hydroponic seeds or marijuana or meth precursors down.

And what you’re telling me is the route isn’t usually Canada to

here. What we’re seeing is the swapping of the cocaine and heroin

we’re seeing in California going north is coming down from Canada, sometimes from Asia, sometimes from Belgium, and the Netherlands, which are still the biggest labs. Then they swap them and

then they go Las Vegas or western California are the most logical

places and then head this way and your meth problems are directly

related to marijuana and cocaine problem going on the Coast because they’re swapping it out.

Is that a fair statement, accurate? Any comments?

Mr. GREY. Yes, I think that’s an accurate assessment. For swapping the drugs in the State of California.

Mr. SOUDER. Or Washington State?

Mr. GREY. Washington State. I think the key is getting it into

the United States once it clears the border there, they don’t have

to go through another critical inspection prior to getting it over to

Hawaii. And again, they’re not talking bulk shipments. It can be

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a pound at a time, five pounds, easily able to go on a person’s body,

Fed Ex shipments are small, air cargo freight shipment, so the detection would be much less than if it was going across the open

port.

Mr. SOUDER. It is certainly identified in the Yakima area of

Washington State a swapping area in Yakima, the Tri Cities, that’s

going heavy into the Midwest as well with fighting traffic and

going to Georgia and finding swaps that are occurring up in that

region going north and south of California.

Mr. BURNETT. That’s exactly right, Chairman.

What has happened is a lot of the nations out in the Pacific, both

Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong when Hong Kong was

handed back to the mainland Chinese, they all belonged to the

Commonwealth, the British Commonwealth, and as such they can

travel amongst the Commonwealth with relative ease.

So you have a mass migration of Chinese into British Columbia

and they bring with them their ties from Asia. And there is a

criminal group that is attendant with all parts of society, and so

not only did you get the business but you also got the criminal

group that preyed upon them that also went to British Columbia.

Then you couple that with the northern border, and as you’re

saying, as you start moving east along the northern border, there

is a million and one roads where they move all the brain trucks

back and forth.

So it is a pretty porous border. And then when it comes into

Washington, the loads get broken down. And why risk 100 pounds

of meth going to the Midwest or going to Hawaii or Guam, it’s easier to break them down into one to two pound parcels, put them in

Fed Ex, U.S. Postal Service, DHL, all of those services, and flood

the market. All you have to do is look at our system we have out

here. We have both a domestic and international mail branch and

they handle millions, millions of pieces every month.

Mr. SOUDER. Congressman Blackburn is on this subcommittee

and we’re planning to do probably either late fall or early next

year, the Fed Ex headquarters in Memphis.

Mr. CASE. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to come back to one

question at the end for each of you, and I’d like to ask the same

question of everyone else that is going to testify; and that is, this

is your Federal Government. Maybe we don’t look like, at least he

does, maybe I don’t.

This is your U.S. Congress, and if you had one thing to ask, one

thing to ask of your U.S. Congress today to deal with meth from

the perspective that you take it from, whether it’s law enforcement,

rehabilitation, preventative education, whatever, what is that one

thing?

Let me leave that for you to think about, and let me ask you because I’m back to the front porch of the Lanai police station after

a long day with the police officers, County of Maui police officers,

by the way, that are on the front lines and dealing with how to go

after the manufacturers. And I asked them what’s really what you

need.

And I’m going to paraphrase the answer, but what it came down

to was we don’t have the tools, the law enforcement tools to catch

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them. They’re moving too fast on us. They mostly come in from the

outside.

They come in by airplane, they come in by ferry, they come in

by jet skis to the north shore, at least this is what they think, and

they set up operations and they identify pretty fast. The Lanai population is 2,500 to 3,000. Everybody pretty much knows what’s

happening.

But by the time they can get the legal enforcement mechanisms

in place to bust them, these guys have sold it and left the island;

or what they told me was the old concept of an ice house is fast

disappearing. They’re really much more into a mobile operation

where the dealers and sellers are one step ahead of the law. And

what they have said is that the State law enforcement mechanisms

aren’t fast enough to give them the ability to bust them.

So therefore, what they are doing is they’re basically skipping

the State and going to the Feds because of the mechanisms of their

rules and their inabilities there to respond a lot faster. Now that

strikes me as an action of necessity but not a particular course of

action. We clearly want both sides, both Federal and State ability.

And it seems to me that stretches even more the Federal law enforcement system.

One of you alluded to Federal guidelines for—so you may get the

most immediate, and that lets those 30 people go back on the

streets. And it goes back to the point I made earlier which is we

either need more Federal law enforcement officials on the ground

in Hawaii, and especially in my Second Congressional District, and/

or we need somehow to fix the State mechanisms so the State law

enforcement can take some of the load off of you, the Feds, who are

stretched out with ice, other forms of drugs, not to mention civil

law enforcement, not to mention homeland security obligations.

So I guess I want to ask you is that something that is true

throughout the State, No. 1; No. 2, what are the solutions because

it seems we need to fix the State law enforcement mechanisms and/

or No. 2, put Federal law enforcement out there in the communities.

Maybe I can start with you Lieutenant Governor because I think

that has been an initiative by the Governor to move these kind of

reasonable modifications to State laws.

Mr. AIONA. You call it reasonable, but obviously there are some

people who don’t feel that it’s reasonable and as such we haven’t

had much success with the legislation that we proposed, especially

this past legislative session. What we did propose were a couple of

things.

First of all, we wanted to bring back the walk and talk issue; in

other words, what we wanted to do was amend the Constitution for

the execution of the walk and talk—the tool, if you want to call it,

law enforcement has successfully used back in the 1990’s on the

local level, on the State level.

And then, of course, our electronic surveillance of laws, what

they’re calling the adversarial process; in other words, how we’re

going about getting wiretaps, etc. by local law enforcement personnel.

The other thing that we tried was to have a little bit more mandatory sentences in regards to people who had been using or dealVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:48 Mar 03, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98604.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing—that’s an issue, when it comes to what amounts, to dealer

quantities, but we had pushed for more stringent sentences, so to

speak, in regards to that. Unfortunately, like I said, there was resistance on that. There were people that felt that it—one, it was

too invasive, it was a violation of civil rights, they felt it shouldn’t

happen here in Hawaii. And of course, it became to a certain extent

a policy issue in regards to emphasis being placed maybe more on

treatment, as opposed to intervention.

And so what had happened as a result of that is you had the continuation of what we’re calling act 161 which basically allows someone who has a previous arrest who now has a current arrest for

a drug-related offense to undergo treatment and be placed on probation. And that, again, like I said, was a policy question that we

were dealing with. We weren’t in favor of that. The administration

definitely was not in favor of that. Being a proponent of Drug

Court, we felt that Drug Court provided that access to treatment

and yet at the same time provided enough of the hammer, so to

speak, to deal with that problem.

So your assessment of what you said I agree with it, but I don’t

agree that we should go more Federal law enforcement. I think if

you talk to everyone who is going to come up here this morning,

they’re going to say we have tremendous collaboration.

Mr. Burnett said and we have to continue it. And I think everything has to shoulder that burden, so to speak, on an equal basis,

if not more so the State, as opposed to the Federal Government.

The FBI, for instance, doesn’t only deal with drug enforcement,

it deals with terrorism and everything else we have going on in

this region. So their resources would be better used, I would say

better used, but you can see the balance that they need.

Mr. CASE. That’s true in an ideal world. In an ideal world we

would have a State law enforcement mechanism where you could,

in fact, go after people with alacrity and commitment, but there are

handicaps. Representative Voight comments on that.

But I guess what I’m trying to get at here is if we can’t get there,

and this is a policy determination made by the local Governor and

State legislature, if we can’t get there, which I think we should, I

agree with you, I agree with you, then we got to do something. And

I don’t know where else to go because there is a whole level that’s

not being caught here under the circumstances.

Mr. AIONA. And I want to make one last comment, if I can, Congressman. Having HIDTA is obviously an advantage for us, but

that’s also a designation that I would prefer to have in this jurisdiction and I’ll leave it at that.

Mr. CASE. We want to get to the next panel. A quick comment

by you on what is the one thing you would ask Congress, just a

quick comment on the——

Mr. BURNETT. About the State and local?

Mr. CASE. Yes.

Mr. BURNETT. It is a real problem for us, inasmuch as—I made

the comment about individuals and it is very common to have individuals out there with 30 arrests and still out loose in the neighborhoods. And these 30 arrests are not like they’re simple possession charges. We don’t go after those kind. These 30 arrests are assaults. We have burglaries. We have larcenies. They have welfare

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charges against them from our State child endangerment. It’s a

critical problem for us and we need the State to be able to step up

to the plate and do their job.

By the same token, from our standpoint, a standpoint where we

organize strike forces and task forces, it is much easier to commingle and build a task force if we have those Federal resources on the

ground, although our Lieutenant Governor might be without a job.

I’d probably give that up and get rid of it as an issue here. I’d gladly give it up. I have grandkids and kids that live here and work

here.

It is important, I think, to have the Federal resources, at least

as a minimal amount, both here on the Big Island and on Kauai

where they’re totally lacking.

Mr. CASE. One thing from Congress.

Mr. GOODWIN. I can’t say anything in just one thing. I want to

comment that we’ve got great cooperation and coordination with

the State and Federal authorities here. The reason they really like

having the Feds here is because of our ability to do wiretaps and

our search and seizure and also the minimum sentencing guidelines. When we send somebody away for 15 years, they’re gone.

Mr. CASE. I think the other comment, again from the front porch

of Lanai, is that the Federal court system moves a little faster in

terms of dealing with it.

Mr. GOODWIN. We do want resources and from our standpoint,

from the FBI’s standpoint, nearly 600 bodies have been refocused

from drugs. And drugs really—here in Hawaii, in particular, I

mean it’s a nationwide problem, but it really does tear up the fabric of the society. And that’s the one thing I wish, I could put two

more people in Hilo, in addition to the two in Kona, and put somebody on Kauai and place them where they’re needed to further foster the spirit of cooperation and coordination that we enjoy in Honolulu and here in Kona, Hilo, and Maui.

Mr. CASE. What do you want.

Mr. GREY. Similar to that, I would agree resources is a big issue

here, but I think more importantly, let’s not forget, we’re a user

State being targeted both by Mexican traffickers and Asian traffickers; and that with the identification in Hawaii as a paradise,

we have the same problems here, if not more so, than the rest of

the United States.

So we’re in this matter with you and take that with you to get

the support and resources out here.

Mr. CASE. I want to make sure I get the Lieutenant Governor.

Mr. AIONA. Of course there are many things on the wish list,

Congressman, but I would like Congress to really raise the bar,

raise the standard, as far as the substance abuse and the effect it

has on our family, to raise it not the top 10 percent, within the top

2 percent; and of course, with that it comes from policy statements,

but I think some commitment to resources, a lot more than what’s

been happening now.

And I really believe that Access to Recovery initiative as being

proposed by SAMHSA at this point in time is something that I

really, really would like is, more money. Thank you.

Mr. GOODWIN. Just what you’re doing right now, hold hearings,

find out what’s effective. In this time of tight budgets, make sure

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that what we are doing is prioritized and we get the information

to your subcommittees as quick as possible.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to make sure we get a couple of additional

things in the record. My understanding was Hawaii has the highest prices for meth.

Mr. BURNETT. If you look at prices on the West Coast, the rule

of thumb is that Hawaii is about double the West Coast. Guam and

Saipan are and some of the territories of the Pacific are about double here.

Mr. SOUDER. And as I recall, you were telling me that one of the

reasons you see the Mexican trafficking organizations moving in

this direction is they can make more money.

Mr. BURNETT. That’s correct.

Mr. SOUDER. I also understood concerning marijuana, that we’re

not even talking about what we’re seeing on the West Coast. My

understanding is some of the THC is up to 40 percent, that 20, 30

would be——

Mr. BURNETT. THC, marijuana historically has been fairly low,

5, 6, 7 percent. We’ve intercepted seeds like you were talking about

coming out of Canada, cross-pollination. Our growers here kick

back seeds to no one. I can tell you that right now. We seized 200

tons of pot out of the State last year and kept it from going to, basically to the mainland.

We have seen some hydro plants that have done as high, I believe, I’m aware of about 28 percent THC, but that’s about the

highest. I think Chris Tally was talking to you at a meeting before

where something was higher, but I’m not sure exactly the lab report. That’s the highest one I’ve seen come back.

Mr. SOUDER. 28 percent. So that would be marijuana almost five

times to—because we’re not going to spend tens of millions of dollars here to address one problem because when you get up to 28

percent higher and you’re approaching meth’s impact.

Mr. BURNETT. It’s a problem and I don’t know exactly. We

haven’t seen a lot whole of that here. It is a problem.

Mr. SOUDER. You also mentioned across the board which is something we don’t hear about in the mainland, particularly when

you’re from the West Coast or the islands way out there, the concept of Guam, Saipan, the Mariana Islands, the America Micronesia, all that type of thing is totally an alien concept.

You’re saying you’ve seen the stuff coming from the Mexican traffickers, you’re seeing historic patterns from Asia, and I believe that

in the superlabs, Mr. Burnett, you expressed some concern that

China was going to basically knock out the Europeans.

Could any of you elaborate on that and then, Mr. Goodwin, if you

could explain some of the potential how you’re going to watch the

organizations out of Indonesia and others who recently are getting

a hold of that drug trade as a means of financing and Al Qaeda,

their sister organizations?

Mr. BURNETT. What Mr. Goodwin and the FBI talked about was

this lab that was in the Fiji Islands and it was as big as an asphalt

batch plant. The precipitator on it alone was almost two stories

high. It was massive. And it wasn’t only there, it took off. There

are two similar labs in Malaysia and one in Manila, in the Philippines, and so there are at least four there.

53

And each one of those have the opportunity to make about $1 billion in profit for these organizations. And the individual behind

this and the financier was Chinese organized crime so I mean it’s

coming. If we get a handle on the Colombians and Mexicans, you

can almost see where the pressure is going to come from. These

guys are organized, and that neck of the woods is not foreign to the

people of Hawaii. That is our ohana. A lot of the people that make

up this unique blend that we have come from the Philippines, come

from Asia, and the Pacific Rim.

Mr. SOUDER. Not to mention, talk about Vancouver and Vietnam

getting control.

Mr. BURNETT. We do see that. We see through our international

branches customs continually picking off shipments that go from

the harvest into the Midwest because there is a huge population

there.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Goodwin, do you have anything to add.

Mr. GOODWIN. I wanted to mention in the Fiji case the precursors also came from China and so certainly China is really extending its influence through the Pacific Rim as is Korea and a number

of the other countries.

The concern for us in terms of narcoterrorism and financing is

the southern Philippines, Indonesia, some of the largest groups of

Islamic followers, fundamentalists Muslims. And it’s probably fair

to say that it’s potentially the next big recruiting ground for Al

Qaeda, the J.I., Abu Sayaf which is already in the southern Philippines and financing drugs and trafficking drugs, using the same

routes that you use now to move people or to move weapons of

mass destruction, that’s a big concern, and it’s a big concern for

Hawaii, too.

We’ve recently done a study looking at the Philippines and Indonesia and the crews that come on boats and the lack of oversight.

We’re really drilling down on that right now with those customs

and immigration. So we’re identifying through intelligence and it’s

some of the new things that we’re doing. Now we’re talking a close

look at it.

Apparently, it’s a problem. But these same routes that you use

to smuggle people and drugs, you could use for smuggling money

and terrorist financing of criminal enterprises.

Mr. SOUDER. We’re not talking high percents here. We’re talking

when you have 270 million Muslims in Indonesia, 1 percent is 2.7

million, one-tenth of 1 percent is 270,000. When you’re dealing with

23 million in a country like Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s a totally different base we’re looking at.

Mr. GOODWIN. And if you look at the level of poverty in those

counties and the lack of any law enforcement, in terms of recruiting for Al Qaeda and terrorist organizations, it would be a very fertile ground. People really don’t have anything much to live for

there. You offer them an opportunity to make money through

State-sponsored trafficking drugs and the opportunities are endless.

Mr. SOUDER. I appreciate all your efforts and Mr. Aiona, Lieutenant Governor, we appreciate your leadership. One of the things

from the Federal level that we’re looking really hard at it, and this

is what’s partly disturbing about some of the State law problems,

54

and that is that we’re dealing with. If you look at the narcotics

question to the degree we don’t get it on the ground in Columbia,

say coca or the meth labs themselves, the further we move down

into the system, if we fail here and fail here, by the time we get

to local enforcement, we’re down to smaller and smaller cases. By

the time we get them into treatment, that means the system has

totally failed them.

They’re in treatment, prevention. We’re trying to do the best we

can, and we need to get more effective at that. But there is only

a certain amount of dollars that the Federal Government is going

to put in for treatment into the State if the State won’t take the

initiative and says, unlike the other 49 States, that we’re going to

use local law enforcement to go after this stuff. We’ll have the

laws—I understand Hawaii has different traditions and it’s a

newer State and Alaska has a little bit of the same questions.

But when, in fact, you say we want to have a cost shifting from

49 States in the mainland, each State has to take care of its load,

too. We’re having this discussion aggressively in California because

they can’t say, oh, we need more dollars for marijuana treatment,

we need more dollars for treating meth but we’re not going to take

some of the steps with which to address the question.

And I know you’ve been an advocate of that, and hopefully, this

hearing helps highlight the interconnection with this because when

we see this is clearly the highest meth use problem we’ve seen anywhere in the United States, it should be a primary focus. Property

crime—I mean tourism is your life blood. Already just coming over

here, I’m hearing certain things about how I you should behave in

the car, what to do in your hotels, where you go. You don’t need

to have that spread through the people who are coming to Hawaii.

Mr. AIONA. You’re right, you’re absolutely right. Thank you for

making those comments. You’re absolutely right. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for coming.

Mr. CASE. I just want to recognize, for the record, someone that

is not represented here which you all would agree deserves recognition and that’s our U.S. Attorney’s office and Ed Kubo who has

been very much a part of the effort and he deserves to be recognized. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. If the second panel will come forward; Honorable

Harry Kim who is mayor of the county of Hawaii. And I understand that means mayor of the city within; Mr. Keith Kamita, chief

of the Narcotics Division, Hawaii Department of Public Safety; Mr.

Lawrence Mahuna, police chief of the Hawaii County Police Department; and Mr. Richard Botti, executive director of the Hawaii

Food Industry Administration.

[Recess.]

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show is that each of witnesses respond inside the affirmative. We’re going to start with Deputy

Mayor William Kenoi, right? Did I get that close?

Mr. KENOI. Close enough. I’ll go with that.

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STATEMENT OF WILLIAM P. KENOI, EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO

MAYOR HARRY KIM, COUNTY OF HAWAII

Mr. KENOI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Chairman

Souder, Congressman Case, thank you for traveling to Hawaii Island for your commitment to finding a solution to this terrible

problem.

My name is William P. Kenoi, and I am proud and honored to

serve Mayor Harry Kim and the people of Hawaii Island as an executive assistant tasked with coordinating the communities response to ice.

Three years ago we collectively embarked on a mission, to stem

the tide of ice that threatened the quality of life for our children,

our families, and our neighborhoods. We took this important first

step because the data, statistics, and more importantly, the personal stories were impossible to ignore.

Children were being abused and neglected at an alarming rate.

An increase in amount and severity of domestic violence complaints; horror stories from the emergency rooms; violence that

stunned the law enforcement community, and a criminal justice

system that was being crushed by ice. It was time to take action.

Ice has been ravaging our community for between 10 and 15

years. We couldn’t talk about this problem anymore. We needed

immediate execution and implementation. This would only be possible with two key elements; No. 1, broad-based community support; and two, the commitment of resource providers at every level.

To this end the Hawaii Island Methamphetamine Summit was

held in August 2002. This summit brought together everyone in the

community, business, government, community members, elected officials, unions, churches, cultural groups, nonprofits, law enforcement, treatment specialists, and prevention and education people.

This collaboration and focus was unprecedented in Hawaii.

Why did the community rally and the resource providers commit?

Because ice affected everyone in community. No one was untouched

by the terrible effects of ice. Ice brought everyone in the community

to the table to find a solution. The collective effort has resulted in

substantial progress in the past 3 years.

We knew there was no simple solution to such a complex problem. However, if we focused on taking small steps hand in hand

with the community, we would improve the health and well being

of the entire community. So our approach was a simple one; focus

on improving our community’s capacity in the areas of enforcement,

treatment, and prevention.

We needed to ensure that we didn’t just talk about, but that we

actually improved enforcement capabilities, that we funded increased treatment options, and we provided for prevention and education that focused on our youth.

There is no denying that ice threatens our future and our way

of life. We lack adequate treatment programs and alternatives on

all islands. We lack treatment options for those incarcerated for

drug offenses. We lack a transportation system that allows youth

and families to access important programs and services. We lack

enough manpower and resources to our law enforcement community to eliminate ice. But Chairman Souder and Congressman

Case, we do not lack community awareness, community commitVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:48 Mar 03, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98604.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ment, and community momentum. And it is at the community level

that we will be successful in eliminating ice from our islands.

All of us commit to the community that will stand side by side

with them in this effort. There is no alternative. Anything short of

a collective, committed, sustained initiative we’ll fail to save our

babies, our children, and our families from dying and being torn

apart. We have no choice in this effort.

We commit to this effort and support our communities or we lose

everyone we have.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before the

distinguished subcommittee on the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. Mr. Kamita.

STATEMENT OF KEITH KAMITA, ADMINISTRATOR, NARCOTICS

ENFORCEMENT DIVISION, HAWAII STATE DEPARTMENT OF

PUBLIC SAFETY

Mr. KAMITA. Thank you, Chairman Souder, Congressman Case.

My Federal partners that you’ve heard before us have gone over

the State’s, I guess, methamphetamine problem quite well. I want

to touch on a section that the State is looking at and basically it’s

the unlawful manufacture of crystal methamphetamine here in Hawaii.

What we are seeing is not the big superlabs, but we are seeing

small laboratories, mom-and-pop laboratories, where they are using

every day household products such as pseudoephedrine, red phosphorous, iodine to manufacture small batches of methamphetamine

which causes just as much danger as a superlab to the neighbors

here in Hawaii.

These laboratories that cook up small batches are posing just as

much danger as these superlabs by dumping their waste in the

ground, by letting and venting their methamphetamine fumes, I

would say, to their neighbors.

In Hawaii, we have had a very little amount of small labs, full

synthesis laboratories where they’re using red phosphorous and iodine, but we have had many conversion labs where they are bringing in the methamphetamine from California and just icing it up

here in Hawaii.

In Hawaii we have a problem with monitoring certain precursor

chemicals, one of which is pseudoephedrine. Hawaii’s law right now

is less than that of Federal law. We do not or we do have a full

exemption on pseudoephedrine and ephedrine combination products. We are looking toward the Federal Government and utilizing

their laws which do put on some restriction which is called Safe

Harbor Products, anything which is three grams in a blister pack,

such as something like this that is sold here in Hawaii every day.

All of Hawaii’s pseudoephedrine that we’re finding in these laboratories are blister packs.

What we ask of the Federal Government is that you look at your

law regarding blister packs, and hopefully, reevaluate that these

blister packs that are utilized in laboratories they do not deter the

meth user from manufacturing. These blister packs were made, I

guess, as an ease to the consumer. However, a person on methamphetamine doesn’t mind punching out 300 to 1,000 of these tablets, just sitting there and doing it.

57

The blister pack law, I think, is outdated and that exemption

should be taken away. And to answer your question, that one thing

the Federal Government can do for us, is to review that law. We

don’t want to make this a Schedule V controlled substance. The

next best step is to look at some regulation. And we have worked

with small retail shops and our Long’s Drugs and other stores at

educating and we did 98 presentations last year, educating both

the public and retailers about the dangers of methamphetamine

and how it’s manufactured. We are working with, as a partnership,

with Mr. Botti and some of the other people who are selling these

over-the-counter items.

In ending, that’s the one thing you can help us with. Thank you

very much. Any questions, I’ll answer later.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kamita follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Chief Mahuna.

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE K. MAHUNA, POLICE CHIEF,

HAWAII COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT

Mr. MAHUNA. Chairman Souder, Congressman Case, it’s a pleasure to be here to look at our ice, what I would call, epidemic. We

are a paradise. We have long-standing relationships. We have

ohanas, which means families, that have been broken apart, families being affected. I’ve lived in areas that have been affected by

ice houses.

Like September 11, it’s changed the course in the way we travel,

ice has changed the course of the way people live in their own

neighborhoods. People no longer can leave their house unlocked,

they can’t leave their garage with items such as lawn mowers and

that type of thing. We’re seeing an increase in violence, both domestic violence and violence in nightclubs, violence in general, violence toward police officers.

So we’re, basically, looking at trying to cooperate with our Federal partners, trying to cope with the lack of personnel because I

think that’s one of the ways that the Federal Government could

help, is to help and assist us in having more FBI agents, more

DEA agents, more ATF agents, customs agents here, because as

Mr. Kamita said we don’t have these big laboratories, we have

small ones.

And yes, they are as insidious as these big giant labs. However,

what is more insidious is that this drug is a generation killer. It

is not a drug that we can say, well, maybe we can treat these people and the treatment of these individuals is not real successful,

No. 1; No. 2, when you talk to child protective people, these people

that use ice are one of the few people that don’t want their children

back. And that’s what you always find at an ice house.

You’ll find living conditions that you wouldn’t have an animal

live in, No. 1. You’ll find young children. You’ll find poly use of

drugs. You’ll find at least one or two pregnant women. You’ll find

high rates of domestic violence, and you will have people that are

afraid to leave their houses for fear that either their house is going

to be entered and their valuable items taken. And when we talk

about valuable items, value is based upon what you feel.

I’ve had a good friend that had poi pounders that are 200 years

old that were in the family stolen and sold for $10. These things

are irreplaceable things, these things that affect the heart and soul

of people on this island.

It has affected people from children 12 years old, 11 years old,

as far as selling the drug. We’ve caught kids on campus that are

13 years old with 10, 12 grams of ice so they can sell, and they’ve

been instructed by the parents to go and sell these drugs because

No. 1, if the kid gets caught, he or she does not face the same kind

of penalties as, say, an adult would selling it in the school.

So we have to set up two task forces in the police department

to strictly look at ice itself, but we have not only looked at the big

organization. One of our issues here is to dismantle the large organizations, of course. But the other issue is to take away the social

terrorism that our people are actually involved in day-to-day. And

when you live that thing day-to-day, that is pure terrorism to me.

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And we ask that the Federal Government, hopefully, will step up

outside of the main island of Oahu and look at the smaller islands

and the bigger islands and provide us with adequate funds, adequate resources. And I think it’s a holistic way of looking at it.

The community has to get involved and has been involved. The

mayor’s office and everybody else, treatment people, the demand

reduction people. So I plead with you to help the people that have

lived here hundreds of years. You’re taking away their source of

who they are and what they are and where they’re coming from.

Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mahuna follows:]

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STATEMENT OF RICHARD BOTTI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

HAWAII FOOD INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION

Mr. BOTTI. Thank you, Chairman Souder and Representative

Case for the opportunity to testify before your subcommittee. I’m

the President of the Hawaii Food Industry, a trade association, representing over 225 of Hawaii retailers, distributors, and suppliers

of food and related items.

I’m here to express our concerns about the placement of

pseudoephedrine on Schedule V where commonly sold medicine

products would be required to be placed behind the pharmacy

counter, sold only by a pharmacy and customers would be required

to show identification and sign a register when they made the purchases.

Retailers would be forced to eliminate the variety or products

and customers would be denied access and availability. Most store

do not have a pharmacy, thus Schedule V would mean that most

over-the-counter cold and allergy medicines could not be purchased

at airports, hotel gift shops, convenience stores, or any other retail

outlet that does not have a pharmacist on duty.

Schedule V would also present a public health problem because

it would limit the amount of medicine that families can legitimately purchase in 1 month. Because there is no central recording

of all pseudoephedrine purchases in the State, this provision will

be impossible to implement and law enforcement would have difficulty enforcing the law without going store to store to compare

names in the log books.

Schedule V will have no impact on internet sales of

pseudoephedrine. FDA and U.S. Customs have testified before Congress that they are able to inspect less than 5 percent of drug packages that go through U.S. Postal facilities from overseas.

Schedule V places an unfair burden on retailers and their employees, most of whom are trying to do the right thing.

We agree that our industry has a responsibility to help in this

crisis we face. We are taking action. Without the placement of

pseudoephedrine on Schedule V, the Hawaii Food Industry is supporting what we call Meth Watch that started in Kansas 2001 and

has a proven track record of success with the reduction and sales

of pseudoephedrine for illegal purposes.

It has reduced the number of meth labs in the State. It has also

resulted in dramatic reductions in the theft of products used to

make meth.

Most important, it addresses a larger problem.

It involves the whole community, law enforcement, retailers,

business leaders, and citizens through the education and prevention efforts and it appears to be having an impact on actual meth

usage.

There is, however, an important element that law enforcement

needs; that is, a list of all retailers that sell targeted products. For

this reason we support the registration of all retailers in the State

who sell OTC or over-the-counter drugs, medicines, that contain

pseudoephedrine. This will provide law enforcement with an accurate list of where the medicines are being sold. Comparing this list

with distribution data that is available under Federal law will

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allow law enforcement to determine whether stores are selling excessive amounts.

HFIA acknowledges that serious action must be taken to prevent

the diversion of precursor chemicals to meth labs, and we want to

be a part of the solution. There are less restrictive alternatives to

Schedule V that include many of the things that I mentioned at the

beginning of my testimony. Demand reduction, prevention, education and partnerships with law enforcement will serve the community at large. There is much that we can do to reduce the meth

problem in this State without placing unreasonable burdens on

consumers to purchase the medicines they need and on the retailers who provide them.

Added to our testimony I would like to include what we will do

without a law and the logo for the Meth Watch program that is

taken off from the Kansas City one. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Botti follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you each for your testimony.

I think I’m going to start backward with the Meth Watch program and tying this in with the blister pack question. Then I’ll

move to Mr. Case and come back to Mr. Kenoi. One of the things

the Big Island received—let me start with this.

Did the grant that came in the appropriations process come to

the Big Island directly? Was it solely for this island? What amount

did you get in the appropriation bill? Was it $5 million?

Mr. KENOI. Last year it was $4 million. It went to the Hawaii

Community Foundation to administer.

This year it’s $4.5, but it’s going to be—last year we received for

the Hawaii Island meth initiative, we received $4 million. That

moneys went from Department of Justice to the Community Oriented Police and Services Program to the Hawaii Community

Foundation for a couple of reasons.

One, they had the grant making capability to administer a broadbased initiative that included enforcement, treatment, and prevention. Two, they had a long-standing commitment of grant making

to the community, grass roots level, and for their reputation for

honesty and integrity. Hawaii County, unfortunately, didn’t have

the administrative capability to administer this grant.

We were fortunate enough to secure a second round of funding,

but that second round of funding in the amount of $4.5 million will

be shared equally amongst Kauai, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, and Hawaii Island. And in the spirit of aloha we are happy to share that

with our fellow residents because everybody in Hawaii is suffering

from this drug.

Mr. SOUDER. And in this drug plan you gave me, does it have a

split out of what you did with the $4.5 million.

Mr. KENOI. There is a breakdown. That was done before we, actually, issued all of the moneys, but I broke it down exactly how

we did.

What we did, just general for you, Mr. Chairman, is $1 million

went to enforcement. Under that enforcement 525,000 went to

HPD. We created an ice task force in east and west Hawaii. We

created an anti-smuggling unit here on Hawaii Island based on

west Hawaii because of the amount of drugs that are coming in,

being targeted to Hawaii with the direct flights from international,

as well as source city destinations on the West Coast.

We also used that money under the enforcement arena, gave a

couple hundred thousand to the Prosecutor’s Office to have a drug

prosecutor designated in both east and west Hawaii so that all of

the cases that were being generated by HPD could be addressed at

the Prosecutor’s level.

Another couple hundred thousand went to the Judiciary and the

Hawaii Island Drug Court both in east and east Hawaii so that

there was an alternative to incarceration for those who wanted and

needed treatment. So that was the enforcement component.

Under the treatment component we, actually, put $1.5 million

into treatment; $500,000 went equally to every treatment provider

around Hawaii Island, $100,000 a piece, not for existing treatment

but for each of the programs to expand treatment services on the

island.

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A million dollars that was in the treatment balance went to the

establishment of an adolescent residential treatment program for

Hawaii Island. What we found out, Chairman Souder, was that all

of our adolescents who need high end treatment were being sent

off island to Maui, Kauai. We were sending teenagers as young as

13, pulling them out of their communities, away from their schools,

away from everything they knew, and sending them without any

support to a residential program off island.

We had been doing this for decades, failing miserably at it. And

we didn’t want to just take our kids, stick them in a home, give

them a drug counselor, and say now you have residential treatment, we did our part. We felt like if our children are our most precious resources, then let us give them the best possible residential

program we could. To that end, a million came out of this grant;

900,000 came from SAMHSA.

Mr. SOUDER. That’s on top of the $4.5 million.

Mr. KENOI. Yes, on top. And we were able to secure $300,000

from the State legislature last year for a total of $2.2 million and

that program just opened a couple weeks ago in Laupahoehoe, 14

acres. It’s a community-based, culturally based, and experientially

based program so that our kids are active, they’re participating in

cultural programs, they’re using the ocean, the land to help them

heal.

So we’re really proud of that initiative, taking that step, because

people said it’s out of your area of jurisdiction, it’s out of your area

of expertise, and you have no money, you’re reaching too far. We

said if we fail, we fail, but we’ve got to try. So we were able to pull

that together.

The other 1.5 went into prevention and demand reduction. And

what we did was we went around the island and we held grant

seminars and grant workshops and we wanted to get the balance

of the resources into the community and asked existing programs

and service providers to come forward and submit grants as to how

they would utilize recreational, cultural, art activities for youth as

a way to reduce the demand for crystal meth and ice. And these

include island-wide mentoring programs, supplementing the Boys

and Girls Club. And we did this island wide because we have a

4,028 square mile island populated by 150,000 people lacking in an

adequate transportation system.

So given that we couldn’t do one or two programs. We’d have to

do programs in all of our communities.

So we set up an independent review panel and we asked people

to solicit and provide technical support.

Mr. SOUDER. Did you say $2 million for prevention.

Mr. KENOI. $1.5.

Mr. SOUDER. $1.5 in three categories.

Mr. KENOI. Yeah, and included in the 1.5 for prevention is the

administrative costs, the evaluation costs to understand if we’re

achieving our outcomes, do we have measurable outcomes, are we

achieving our goals and objectives.

Mr. SOUDER. And were those 12 month programs, had to be done

within 12 months, or——

Mr. KENOI. We got an extension. It was Federal moneys that

came down, we got it announced, President Bush post September

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11 didn’t sign any of the budgets except defense appropriations and

so everything went back, it’s on the omnibus bill, then it came out,

then DOJ, and Department of Justice——

Mr. SOUDER. It’s basically 12 months. You didn’t ask people for

like a 3-year prevention program.

Mr. KENOI. Yeah, we asked people for 1 year with the understanding that we’ll probably stretch this money over 2 years because it’s a model program. It hasn’t been done anywhere else in

the country. As you know, DOJ top moneys are enforcement based

usually resources and we asked DOJ to help us, work with us and

let’s make this an across the spectrum program, and they’ve been

very cooperative at the Federal level.

There was hesitancy on their part initially like what is this adolescent residential treatment. This is Department of Justice moneys. What is this island-wide mentoring program so the youth can

connect with the career or vocation or opportunity; how does that

relate to drug abuse and we had to go and explain using the data

that we had that we can’t just hire more police officers, we can’t

just build more prisons. We got to reach our children. We got to

reach our families.

Mr. SOUDER. How many people are there on the Big Island.

Mr. KENOI. Approximately, 150,000. I’ve heard from 148 to 162,

somewhere thereabouts.

Mr. SOUDER. One of the reasons we need to have good monitoring

is to see some reaction. This grant is the biggest grant that’s gone

anywhere in the United States for meth. The standard is a million,

and those usually cover whole States; that $4.5 million for 150,000

people means it’s less than half the size of my hometown. It’s less

than half the size of some of my rural counties, and it’s less than

half the size of two other counties I have.

This is incredibly intensive dollars in a problem to address the

meth, particularly when you add in 900,000 SAMHSA on top of it

and you’re trying to do it in 12 months because often this size

grant would be over 3 years in an area that may address 3 million

people.

And so if you don’t see some results that are fairly dramatic, it

calls into question whether money is really going to have much of

a reaction.

Now, the adolescent youth facility, there the $2.2 million was allotted in the structure, was it?

Mr. KENOI. It was both CIP, as well as operational.

Mr. SOUDER. What would you say was the split of those dollars?

Mr. KENOI. We issued our request for proposal, we’re talking

300,000 CIP, the rest operational. Now, the cost for an adolescent

for treatment is between 275 and $325 per day, per bed. So just

an 8-bed residential facility, it’s $100,000 per bed per year to treat

one of our children for dramatic substance abuse addiction. So it’s

$800,000 for 1 year just operational because when you’re dealing

with adolescents, you’re dealing with 24-hour care, 7 days a week,

both educational care, healthcare, and substance abuse counseling

so it’s rather intensive and costly.

And that’s the reason we haven’t had—if you’re on the mainland

and you need residential treatment, your parents can drive 2 hours

to see you, to support you. Here, you’re sent on an airplane that’s

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very expensive, and you might not be seen by your family or

friends for another 4 or 5 months.

It was something we needed to do to step up. I mean how can

we say we have the highest rate of crystal meth abuse and substance abuse in the entire Nation and we ask our children to step

forward and ask for help and when we do so, we pull them away

and send them away.

That caused incredible damage and it really makes a farce of any

initiative. You cannot say we have the highest rate of substance

abuse of our adolescents, ask for money based on that statistic, and

then when we get those resources, we say, oooh, it’s too expensive,

it’s a high risk investment.

Mr. SOUDER. For example, in Montana where you have people

spread out 1,200 miles, they can’t stay in their home area. Now,

it is different moving islands and the cultures are difficult, and I

understand that, but it’s not like in the mountain West we don’t

have similar things. If somebody from my district needs adolescent

care, they may have to go a minimum of 6 hours to the other end

of the State, for example, and I’m in a pretty heavily populated

area.

I agree it’s a little bit more of a mental challenge because I’m

trying to get adjusted as I’ve been here to this concept of ex-pats,

people who have left here when you say you don’t have job opportunities for young people to stay on the islands and they want to stay

on the islands, it’s like, well, that’s true in every State because less

than 40 percent of the people, sometimes as low as 20 percent stay

in their home State. We’re a highly mobile Nation.

But the difference is you’re way out in the middle of the ocean

and water between the different islands and there is a much more

of a—almost a—particularly among the native Hawaiian population some of the other immigrant groups have fixation to land in

the immediate area more like the Native American nations inside

the United States. And that presents a different type of a challenge, much like what happened in the Indian schools in the West

which were not particularly effective when they moved the kids

from the reservation into Phoenix, say, and the impact on the education system.

So I agree it’s a different challenge and I’m trying to work that

through. On the other hand, it’s not unusual that young people

have to move long distances away from their families all over the

United States and Alaska, for example. Let me yield to.

Mr. CASE. Do you want to make a followup.

Mr. KENOI. Yes. I completely agree with you, and there are times

when you need to be sent off island when there are too many negative dynamics around them in their home area. I completely agree

with you, Chairman Souder, and we understood it from day 1, that

we were fortunate we were given an opportunity to be a model program. We knew that we were getting resources that weren’t available to other communities across this entire country.

So it wasn’t an idea of let’s get this money and do our thing with

it. It was give us the opportunity with these resources to see how

we can create a unique program. And if we’re effective, we can replicate this elsewhere in the country. Instead of giving a little bit

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and guessing what works and what doesn’t work, let us be the

guinea pig, if you will, let us be a test.

And I think on our island community has done a good job with

it. We’ll see with the specific data and measurables. But we have

a community that the mayor, the police chief, the prosecutor are

all on the same page and committed. We’re looking at a community

that anywhere you go on the island, people come out, they respond,

they take the time to be there.

People put aside their political and personal differences, ideological differences, and understand that the only way we’re going to

succeed is if we collectively and collaboratively work together. So

we understand that. This is a unique opportunity and we feel the

importance of doing right by it.

Mr. CASE. Just staying with the question because I think you’re

exactly right, Billy, this was represented to the Congress and Congress approved it and through Senator Inouye’s efforts a test, a national test. This is the model. What works and what doesn’t?

So with that there is an opportunity, a tremendous opportunity

that, frankly, the rest of our State doesn’t have but also a tremendous responsibility. And I think there is also a responsibility at the

end of the day to recognize and honestly assess what the results

were. Because I think what I’m hearing in the Chair’s questions

are basically we do have to analyze the cost effectiveness at the

end of the day.

Are there any results—not results, do you have any sense of

what really is working and what is still open for question? Do we

know, for example, in your opinion, that the moneys allocated to,

for example, we spent the whole first panel talking about law enforcement, trying to give our law enforcement community the tools

it needs. And it doesn’t have the tools. It doesn’t have the tools in

the State books, and it doesn’t have the tools within the Federal

reach or both really, and you have supplemented in that way. You

got people out in the community on a law enforcement basis. Rehabilitation, we’ve always known that was expensive and we have

never devoted these kind of resources to it. Preventative education

has always been touted as the way to go but at the expense of rehabilitation.

Is it honestly too early to give the committee any indication of

what really is a slam dunk or what is out there? Do you have any

answers?

Mr. KENOI. Yes, I’ll take a stab at that because I’m constantly

asking and curious. Nobody is going to stand up and say this is

what we know. For example, SAMHSA’s directory, I sent a letter

to every chemical dependency, substance abuse agency, office, university, department across the country just to see and ask do we

know what works.

It’s amazing how much billions of dollars we spend every year on

substance abuse related issues and a lot of people still shrug,

they’re still not sure. That’s no reason to sit around and—you

know, analysis by paralysis.

But to get back to your question what works, I will say this. We

contracted with the University of Hawaii Manoa, Center for the

Family. They do excellent work in terms of evaluating programs

and resources and it’s an independent review of resources and proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:48 Mar 03, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98604.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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grams and services and how effective, what is the effectiveness of

that.

But if you ask me, walking around, because people ask every

day, you go to a family party, somebody will stop you, how’s it

going, what’s working. Senator Inouye was here a couple weeks ago

and we had a briefing from HPD, and they used what indicators

they had, whether it’s working. Price on the street for crystal meth

doubled. That’s an indication that things are working. We created

an ice hotline.

The community’s No. 1 concern, police/law enforcement not effective. Ice house on my street 5 years, 3 years, 6 months, nobody is

doing anything. That ice house is a plague on our community and

on our children. We started an ice hotline, I think, maybe 50, 60

calls a week, people saying what can we do with this ice house.

And what we did with this ice hotline—I want to give Chief

Mahuna credit for this, is that we documented every call, so that

when a person called in to speak to a sergeant and the next time

a patrolman and the next time dispatch.

They documented every call. Now we have one to two complaints

a week.

Mr. CASE. Were those efforts funded out of the money; in other

words, you had the resources to do that out of the moneys that

were provided.

Mr. KENOI. What we were told when we were given Federal moneys is that you guys have to get State moneys and county moneys

put forward so that it’s not just all of us relaying on the State, and

this was part of the county’s contribution, to supplement the Federal moneys.

So that’s why we were told right off the top by Senator Inouye’s

office, as well as yourself, Congressman Case, is that when you get

congressional money, you can’t just ask Congress and the Federal

Government to step up and pay for it. The community has to do

their part, the county government has to put in something, and the

State, you guys have to ask the State legislature, and they stepped

for us and supplemented only what little they put. Those are the

indicators that are working.

I’ve had people stop me as recently as last week telling me thank

you. I said, it’s not me, it’s the communities. I’m just trying to do

my job to help the communities. They said, you know, 3 years ago

we wouldn’t go to the beach anymore, Billy. We wouldn’t go to the

parks, it was scary. It seemed like the drug dealers and the people

who were using and dealing owned the public areas. And now it

feels safe, we all go out, families use the community parks, they

use the beaches, there is no fear. People were terrified a couple

years ago, scared. Nobody wanted to even talk to me about the

problem and these are anecdotal. It’s not documentation.

But I think if you were to ask most people in this community for

their fair opinion, I think people will say that it’s not magic, there

are still bad things going on, but have we progressed. Have these

resources made a difference? Absolutely.

The biggest difference is we always ask communities to do it

themselves, to step up to the plate because that’s true sustainability. These moneys will come and these moneys will go. That’s

the reality. Grants come and grants go. But the community stays,

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and they’re the key to sustainability. But communities won’t participate if they feel they’re just being given lip service.

If the media is there and there is a big clap of hands and everybody rah-rah and all these promises made and 6 months, a year

down the road, nothing happens, they’re not coming back to the

meeting. In fact, you’re going to have twice a hard time for getting

them back the next time, whatever the next issue might be, affordable housing, homelessness, whatever, economic development.

But the reason this works and the reason we’re 3 years in and

people care and people participate is because the government did

step up and there are resources to address communities needs and

there is a difference being made, so people are willing to participate.

Mr. CASE. Chief Mahuna, thank you for the true manao. That

was very well put. Comments on the first panel’s observations on

the limitations on your powers and abilities to do what you think

you need to do to bust people.

Were the first panel’s observations or limitations on State law—

and what I heard on Lanai, your officers actually utilizing Federal

resources because the State says it doesn’t work down on the

street, is that your experience here on the Island of Hawaii as

well?

Mr. MAHUNA. I think it’s a fair assessment to be made. I think

every case may require a wiretap, every case may look at large organizations that affect our island because for Federal, simply the

fact that the laws are not the same. The adversary hearing when

it comes to the wiretap is a hindrance. The unconstitutionality of

the ‘‘walk and talk’’ inhibits us from doing our job.

So what we’ve done and successfully done is use island work in

conjunction with our cohorts on the Federal level and I think we’ve

become very successful. We’ve looked at other intensive ways.

When I look at the terror that people feel, when a parent comes

up to me and says thank you very much for arresting my child with

tears in their eyes, you don’t see that. Usually, you get a pie in the

face for arresting my kid.

In small rural areas where we didn’t have the type of law enforcement presence, we went down there and we cleaned up a

bunch of ice houses. And they said, my God, thank you very much

because it makes them breathe better. It makes the fear level decrease and the cooperativeness increase. It gives them a feeling

that someone cares about them.

So the task forces were developed. Yes, we are looking at the dismantling of large meth labs and meth organizations, but we’re also

looking at those ice houses, the ones that plague our people more

than anything else because the community cannot take care of

their very young and very old. And the very old usually end up

being the victims of some sort of crime against persons or some

sort of property offense where things of value have been taken from

them. And this is not—just trying to get very material with this.

I mean things that were passed down from their father’s father,

things that mean so much to their heart.

For example, the passage of these items and artifacts to their

children and to their families are no longer there. And to me that

is the measure of how effective we can be, and I think we can be

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effective given the same type of laws and the same type of criminal

justice system Statewide, that we could get the same kind of action

and the same type of penalties by Honolulu and probably keep everything on a State level.

But because we can’t, the biggest bang for the buck is to go the

Federal way. And I think people will think twice, hopefully, that

if you deal with large quantities and get 25, 30 years, period, you

don’t get probation, you don’t get anything else, it will make an effect on them. But there are other things that the addiction has not

addressed, and I think that is an issue for money. Because we took

down an organization, yes, it’s slow in coming, but the addiction to

money is there, too. So what happens is we have replacement people, people that move up in the tiers of the organization. So when

we take an organization down, we have to take the entire organization. That way we get not only the people that run the organization

but we get second, third, fourth tier people that move up when we

make those arrests of these large leaders of the organization.

Mr. CASE. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I’m going to ask to insert two statements from Elaine Wilson, Chief of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division, Hawaii Department of Health that were given to the Joint

House Senate Committee. We met with her Friday, last Friday,

and went through a couple of things. And the good thing about

having a long-term problem like Hawaii has had, is you have more

tracking than anywhere else we have in the United States. We’re

getting hit.

And one of the things that’s really interesting here, not saying

the Big Island, per se, but in the State of Hawaii, is that from the

tracking data she has which is not perfect because it’s voluntary

and parents have to give permission for the kids to give the data,

in the juveniles it looks like the use of ice has dropped at a fairly

steady rate, but adults are going up because the previous high

school ice users are hitting the adult market.

And you have a potential tipping point among youth to hammer

at home while you’re—a lot of times when you’re fighting uphill,

it takes a lot more dollars if you got a tipping point to close down

on this prevention. But the problem you’re going to have which has

happened with marijuana certainly all over the United States, particularly people think of it as 1960’s stuff, a high THC type of variation. And then the adults that have used marijuana and they’re

not willing to crack down on their kids, say, oh, well, this is OK,

I used it back when I was a kid. That group of meth users who

are now becoming adults, you don’t want to counter-infiltrate the

kids in school as they move in and get another wave of meth, even

if you accomplish this now.

Because you have a track record in looking at what impact you

have is a way we can see to some degree your variables in other

States. Because meth is the fastest growing category, we’re seeing

different parts of the United States doing that which is why Senator Inouye and your delegation was able to get an incredible

amount of dollars concentrated in one place, on one island, in a

very small State.

So we wanted to see some of that and you have this great track

record data to add to what we already have and it’s very interestVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:48 Mar 03, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00091 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98604.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing. On the law enforcement side it’s very unusual to have the cops

go that way, but I can see why, because it’s difficult for you to utilize the dollars if he’s hearing, oh, we all hear this a lot.

In my area, crack is a big problem. Oh, there’s a crack house

over there and the police aren’t going for it. There’s things like you

have to prove it, what size bust is it, you have to go through the

court process. Sometimes you’re trying to track a bigger case in

which stuff is coming in. But if you don’t have basic law enforcement tools, it weakens that. If you continue to turn up in your survey that’s one of the problems, if you can’t get the State legislature

to change the laws so you can get more local law enforcement, then

you need to figure it out, because we talked to the HIDTA.

There are ways you can get the Federal Government involved in

the middle of that because if that undermines your prevention

tools, if they think they find something, they work at it, they can’t

get the bad guys cracked down on, it also sends a bad message to

the kids, swift certain punishment.

No matter what treatment program, what prevention program

ultimately many of them say but you could go to jail. That’s the

stick part of the carrot efforts in the Boys and Girls Clubs and everything else.

I want to move to the blister packs. We very much appreciate

your testimony, Mr. Kamita, because we’re dealing with this legislation at the Federal level. And let me say I have had a drug chairman who is very concerned about the nature of the methamphetamine breaking down after and everything else.

I grew up in the retail business. I’m one of you. There are at

least five of us in Congress who aren’t attorneys. Actually, there’s

more than that. There are 5 or 10 of us who are actually retailers,

and we actually had a very small grocery store and not a pharmacy. And I know exactly what you’re saying. Just driving around

on the island here, you can see the concept, not to mention ABC

stores everywhere, but the little grocery stores as well present a

challenge.

Do you see that if there was a size cutoff, let me deal with the

basic thing, that could it be handled like cigarettes; in other words,

behind the counter but not up front?

Mr. BOTTI. It could, but it’s going to be very inconvenient for the

consumer, unlike tobacco products, which we definitely do not want

the children to have. And if you look at the tax and the costs because in order to produce tobacco, government came in and tax,

tax, tax, tax, we wouldn’t want that to happen with cold medicines.

You want the people to have them and you want people to have

them at the least possible price.

The way I’m looking at this after this hearing is the retailers are

not the problem, but the retailers are the visibility. Everybody sees

the retailer, but they don’t see the drug dealer. They don’t see

what’s coming in from behind the scene. So therefore, it’s the retailer’s responsibility to act and be aggressive on helping the

knowledge area.

We can do this without a law. The photo that I passed out was

KTA Superstores. I happen to be a resident in Waikoloa Village

now, and this is the Village Market. They have a limit of five packages per day. It doesn’t really mean anything because if somebody

85

wants it, they’re going to be limited to one, but they’re going to

come in every day to get it.

But what this does is it allows them to put up a sign that creates

education for all consumers. They put it in a highly visible area.

And this is based on us going to the Keith Kamita, School of Manufacturing Methamphetamine, because Keith put on a workshop for

KTA managers and it was amazing the attitude change because

they didn’t know how to make it. Now that they know how to make

it, they know what people are looking for and that changes.

It’s highly visible. They limit the number of quantity to seven of

any one item on the shelf, so therefore, you don’t have the shelf

going all the way back. The problem is not the customer buying it,

it’s the stealing of it. So this is where they’re going to get the quantity. They’re going to come and sweep the shelf.

So we have stuff going on-line and we just signed on to the Meth

Watch Program, and I think we’re like the sixth State to sign-off

on it. So working with Keith, getting the education out, educating

the retailers, having them educate the public through publicity of

these items and then we’re not going to be a problem.

Now, we would be a problem if we didn’t do this because as law

enforcement dries up the hard core stuff, then they will start working the shelves at the store. But like with cigarettes, they have a

bust, they stop at every store, 10 people get off and they each buy

the limit. That was happening with cigarettes until—I think Ed

was there when they passed that law, that they put real stiff regulations on the cigarettes. That’s what stopped it, and the State

gave $20 million in tax revenue. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Kamita, well, Oklahoma has a restriction. Well,

one of the problems there is at a hearing in Arkansas where we

had some testimony, I learned that, for example, to get around it

in Oklahoma, they happen to come to my home State of Indiana

which is 800 miles—actually, they went to Chicago, but the guy

was operating out of Indianapolis, Indiana which is about 150

miles from Chicago. Chicago is about 600 to 800 miles, actually,

800 to 1,000 from Oklahoma because Chicago had no limits, they

hadn’t had small meth labs and would just bring a whole car load

of this stuff back to Oklahoma.

That type of pressure is really putting pressure on the Federal

Government right now because clearly in at least the mainland

contiguous States, it isn’t really working very well.

And the question is, are we going to grandfather in States, and

at what level? This is going to be a big issue, probably, next year

as we work through this and that’s why this question is important.

I don’t want to have a small business problem versus a big business problem, but I’m very familiar with Wal-Mart, having been to

the distribution centers, they’ve got the scanners, they know basically between 9 and 9:15 how many people with slightly gray hair,

black, how much toothpaste of this kind and they can get in their

computer systems. A small grocer would not have that ability. But

I don’t think it’s as hard to do the tracking when they move store

to store as more move to scanners.

Could you discuss a little bit how the smaller stores move as

compared to the bigger stores and how you see that working?

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Mr. KAMITA. Well, some of our problem is not so much big stores

like Long’s Drugs or Safeway who are connected among themselves

or if they have a pharmacy within themselves. We have in Hawaii

what we call a pharmacy alert system where we can put out an

alert to every pharmacy in this State as to a suspected person

who’s, what we call, smurfing pharmaceuticals or smurfing regulated chemicals. It’s the little mom-and-pop stores, the ABC stores

that don’t have pharmacies inside where an individual can come in

with a crew and maybe buy small quantities.

Mr. Botti is correct. A lot of the time the biggest problem is them

coming in and sweeping the shelf because maybe that facility had

too much product on the shelf. With KTA we told them to limit

their box count. It will save them money. It also limits the amount

of pseudoephedrine they can get on the street.

We’ve trained a lot of these pharmacies, a lot of these retailers

as to what to watch for. But as you can tell Mr. Botti here, there

are some pharmacies who give out seven packages, some that will

only allow three packages so it’s not a consistent message.

We’re looking at saying three packages and no more, and that

kind of drives it home that any clerk would know three packages

of any one item, that’s it, versus having to worry about how many

milligrams was that and calculate it up.

We know that each blister pack can have no more than 3 grams.

That’s why we set a 9 gram limit.

Mr. SOUDER. Is Meth Watch voluntary right now by individual

store and chain, or is that a Statewide effort, the Kansas variation.

Mr. BOTTI. It’s voluntary. We will be promoting it for all stores.

And I think on what Keith is talking about if the legislature, say,

adopted a resolution stating that they’re asking the stores to do it,

we can do that without a law. The problem with the law is then

you get a clerk that messes up. And if you’ve been in the grocery

store, you get food stamps, you get WIC, you get cigarettes, you get

liquor, and now you’ve got pseudoephedrine.

Mr. SOUDER. Fortunately, you have graduate students who are

40 years old watching that. That was a joke, by the way, for the

record.

Mr. BOTTI. So the issue is we don’t have to make criminals out

of the customers signing in and getting proprietary information

also. You’re talking about social security number, driver’s license

number, address, phone number. If we can avoid that and have the

visibility, go along with the high visibility, go in and voluntarily

limit the program, limit what’s on the shelf, come in with a reporting form that would go to Keith Kamita’s office, that is something

that would be much more preferable than stating that if they don’t

do it right, it’s a misdemeanor, and then go to jail.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you have a problem with the repeal of the Federal Business Act?

Mr. BOTTI. I can’t answer that, but I know they are working on

a chemical that would go in there that would make it nonusable

for making ice. I don’t know how far away that is. I think that’s

something that should be looked at if they’re going to change the

blister pack which was made in order to help resolve this problem

and keep the product on the shelf for those consumers that need

it.

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If that’s going to be a year away, then I would say no sense in

tampering with it if the manufacturers are going to go ahead and

do that. I would say that would be far preferable than changing the

law.

Mr. SOUDER. Yeah, I have a feeling it’s 1 year away, but it would

be preferable if we could get that in. And I would be interested in

getting further input into the committee to see how you’re moving

on the Meth Watch, how widely it’s being accepted, the effectiveness it’s having. They’re enthusiastic in Kansas, but they’re still

having more rapid growth of labs so Kansas is struggling with

what to do right now, too.

Congressman Jerry Moran represents that a lot of the west has

just exploded in spite of the Meth Watch, so we need to continue

that. Retailers often are the tax collectors for sales tax because

we’re that distribution point. And since businesses don’t pay taxes,

individuals pay taxes, so it’s not like you’re going to get it out of—

your costs go up because of this. It doesn’t mean your profits are

going to go down. It means consumer prices are going to go up.

At the same time we’ve had to do this for cigarettes because as

a major point of distribution, and bartenders get hit for distributing alcohol to somebody who’s drunk, but there is different accountability. We prefer not to do it that way. If we can address it in

some of these other kinds of ways of putting things inside the blister pack, changing the blister pack law, trying to do Meth Watch

and that type of thing.

But it’s really important for the retail industry to understand

they need to be cooperative here because government has clearly

shown they’re not oversympathetic to the problems of the retailers

and the challenges. People love to complain how come everybody is

going to Wal-Mart and the big stores. Well, this is the type of pressure that’s very difficult for smaller stores.

At the same time you can’t tolerate a community that’s being

overrun with meth and we have to figure out how to do deal with

it.

Do you have any further comments?

Mr. CASE. My question from the last panel, Keith I think you’ve

answered it. Chief Mahuna, one thing from Congress.

Mr. MAHUNA. Well, the only thing, as far as our department is

concerned, it’s resources to at least start programs that are—when

you look at prior to the ice teams or ice task force; 2002, recovered

2.6 covered pounds versus 13.5 pound, triple the cases, with more

people in keeping programs than institutions.

And I think everybody is asking for resources, but when you look

at an island like this that is connected by basically one road, we

have small pockets of rural people that if they have a problem,

they try to take care of it. And it may exacerbate the problem by

trying to keep the person there.

You have a police force that quite frankly is one-fifth or one-sixth

that of Oahu. Yes, you have the density on Oahu, we have the size.

Anything we can put a seed, whether it’s through task force type

of operations where we can accept at least a year or 2 years of the

Federal Government’s money and then, of course, we’ll pick up as

we go along. We start picking up these individuals.

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But right now you’re looking at the war and the activation of the

National Guard, our people are down. I think the last count at

least 40 positions so you’re looking——

Mr. CASE. Out of.

Mr. MAHUNA. Out of about 400.

Mr. CASE. Down 10 percent.

Mr. MAHUNA. It’s about 10 percent and it’s not counting people

that are not there for whatever reason, long-term, industrial accidents, and that type of thing.

So when you’re looking at a police department trying to take in

an effective law enforcement strategy working on an island this

large with pockets of community that are stretched 60, 90 miles

apart, it may seem small comparison to States the size of Montana.

But 90 miles in travel—we have areas where basically can’t go on

patrol because we don’t have the individuals to do that. Response

times are horrendous. So anything that could give some seed to law

enforcement locally, I think would benefit, not only the county, the

State, but I think it would also facilitate the Federal collaboration

that we have.

Mr. CASE. Thank you. Mr. Kenoi.

Mr. KENOI. I think if we ask for anything, Congressman Case,

it would just be continued support and cooperation. No one level of

government, whether it’s Federal, State, county, no one entity, no

one sector within the community is going to make the difference or

has the resources or has all the energy and ideas.

But if we can continue working together and cooperating and

moving forward and sharing information back and forth, we’ll be

happy to share any information we have for the last couple years,

but as long as we stick together we’ll be better for it in the community. The community will see that cooperation. It will give them

that feeling that they’re not wasting their time and effort in continuing to address this problem, and that’s all.

Mr. CASE. I think we’re going to be called to account for this island because at some point the jury is going to come in and it’s

going to be our turn to report back to the rest of the country how

we did. I think that’s an effort you’ve been very good at leading.

And I think I do want to recognize, for the record, somebody who

is not here physically but is simply here in spirit and that’s Mayor

Kim.

Lieutenant Governor, and he talked for his wishlist about our

Federal Government specifically at the top of the list and Mayor

Kim has not just talked it, he’s lived it, so he deserves our recognition. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. In North Dakota at the Canadian border, there in the northwest corner, there is a little crossing home

port, and I think the county is 90 miles by 120 miles. They have

two policemen, a chief and a deputy chief.

Now, the good thing is that’s more than the number of trees, and

it’s so flat that anybody who tries to get away, you can see them

for almost 100 miles. That’s the other difference here in Hawaii in

trying to move through all the tropicals and mountains.

We appreciate your work, if you can pass that to all the people

who work with you, too. I look forward to getting updated. Thank

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you for taking the time to be with us today. We’ll take a brief break

if the third panel could come forward.

[Recess.]

Mr. SOUDER. Our third panel is Mr. Grayson Hashida. You’re

from the Big Island Substance Abuse Council; Mr. Allen Salavea,

Office of the Prosecuting Attorney with the Youth Builder’s; and

Dr. Jamal Wasan, the Lokahi Treatment Program.

Dr. WASAN. Centers.

Mr. SOUDER. And would you each raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that they each responded in

the affirmative and we’re going to start off with Mr. Hashida.

STATEMENT OF GRAYSON HASHIDA, BIG ISLAND SUBSTANCE

ABUSE COUNCIL

Mr. HASHIDA. Thank you, Congressman Souder and Congressman Case, for this opportunity to share. The Big Island Substance

Abuse Council has been responding to those who are reaching out

for help from addiction and alcoholism for many years. This is evident by the 40 years of service this non-profit organization has

been operating here on the island of Hawaii.

Drugs are not a new phenomenon to the island, but much has

changed in recent years. What is a phenomenon is the incredible

impact that the drug methamphetamine known as ice has created.

Few Big Island residents can state that they have not been touched

in one way or another by this terrible drug. Addiction, violence,

and crime now recognize ice as the motive or reason behind the action.

At the Big Island Substance Abuse Council the impact began in

the mid 1990’s as the number of consumers presenting themselves

with ice as their drug of choice began a steady increase. In the year

2000, ice became the most common addiction being treated at our

programs. Today, the number of individuals in the Big Island Substance Abuse Council programs who will report addiction or abuse

of methamphetamine is overwhelming. All ages, all cultures, all income levels, no one is ignored by this addiction.

There are many opinions as to why this trend has occurred.

These opinions are as diverse as the people who occupy this beautiful island, and the speculation will undoubtedly continue. The Big

Island Substance Abuse Council has moved beyond the question

why and is now looking to the solution. Local, State, and Federal

Government departments began efforts to reach out to the people

of Hawaii County and take a lead in developing the strategy and

solution to the problem. Partnerships and collaborative efforts have

begun a new trend related to ice that is ‘‘Healing Our Island.’’

A combination of law enforcement, prevention, and treatment efforts has resulted in a comprehensive approach to turn the tide.

Details related to the Big Island Substance Abuse Council’s role in

these efforts include the development and implementation of many

new programs and opportunities for those impacted by ice addiction. The primary objective is to increase capacity of programs

while reducing barriers to accessing services.

Providing services to children and adolescents is one of the primary objectives. The Big Island Substance Abuse Council is now in

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all of Hawaii County’s public high schools. A full-time substance

abuse counselor is available in the familiar environment of the

school and can be accessed in confidence. Adolescents who present

evidence of substance abuse can also be referred directly. The behaviors and patterns that lead to substance abuse are addressed

where and when it is appropriate, not after it has progressed to addiction.

For the adolescents who have progressed past early intervention,

the Big Island Substance Abuse Council is a partner in developing

and implementing a comprehensive Residential Substance Abuse

Treatment Program. This experiential program is designed on the

Big Island, by Big Island professionals, for Big Island kids.

These adolescent programs are provided in addition to the outpatient treatment services established by Big Island Substance

Abuse Council in Kona, Waimea, and Hilo many years ago. These

programs work directly with Judiciary and family referrals for adolescents appropriate for an outpatient level of care such as The Big

Island Juvenile Drug Court. Treatment services are provided to

this target population while the Drug Court monitors progress and

provides accountability through incentives and sanctions for the

participant. This program has demonstrated excellent outcomes

throughout the mainland and expectations are high as the Big Island Drug Court is implemented in Hawaii County.

Families have experienced a significant amount of turmoil and

damage due to ice as demonstrated through increased domestic violence, child abuse, and homelessness. The Big Island Substance

Abuse Council responded to this community need through the development of therapeutic living programs. These homes accommodate target populations in a homelike setting with the reinforcement of full-time staffing. Programs for new mothers and their infant children and the home for single fathers and their children are

examples of how the therapeutic living programs reach out to meet

the specific needs of the families.

With 24 programs throughout the island of Hawaii, the Big Island Substance Abuse Council continues to provide effective and efficient services to those in need. Regardless of age, cultural identity, or income level, our programs are developed to provide immediate access and to reduce barriers to appropriate treatment and

prevention services.

The Big Island Substance Abuse Council is honored to be a part

of the solution in the efforts of Healing Our Island. The responses

to our community needs and development of solutions to the ice

epidemic were possible only through a collaborative and strategic

effort of everyone involved. Support from our government officials

such as Senator Daniel Inouye, Governor Linda Lingle, and County

of Hawaii Mayor Harry Kim provided leadership and inspiration to

stand firm.

While much progress has been made, and the efforts have been

rewarded with success, there remains tremendous needs. Support

for the individuals, families, and communities throughout the island of Hawaii will be necessary as the work continues. Many rural

areas hit hard by economic turmoil and the devastation of ice still

have little or no services for their residents.

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Longer durations of treatment have been proven effective for

methamphetamine addiction, but treatment episodes continue to be

limited in length. Specific target populations such as those with cooccurring disorders struggle to find appropriate care.

The island of Hawaii continues to need the support of our Federal agencies to maintain the course and develop all of the resources necessary to overcome this epidemic. Please continue providing the funding opportunities and support that have allowed the

progress to occur and will continue to support the efforts toward

Healing Our Island. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Salavea.

STATEMENT OF ALLEN SALAVEA, OFFICE OF THE

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY WITH THE YOUTH BUILDERS

Mr. SALAVEA. Aloha mai kakou, Chairman Souder, Representative Case. I would like to begin by thanking you for this opportunity to testify on the impact of crystal methamphetamine or ice

as it is locally known. Part of my testimony is to quantify the ice

problem and its impact on the youth of Hawaii island. And the

other part is to give you a preview of the prevention, treatment,

law enforcement, and community mobilization initiatives that have

taken place in response to the crisis.

My testimony is about the hope we have in our people, as well

as the promise we are making to future generations by taking action now to purge the poison of ice out of our communities.

Hawaii island is in a fight for the lives and futures of our children. In 2002 Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug survey for the

County of Hawaii stated that 2.3 percent of eighth graders and 6.1

percent of seniors had tried ice at least once in their lives.

The survey goes on to report that 60.9 percent of eighth graders

felt that laws and norms in Hawaii island are favorable to drug

use.

Statistics on the impact of ice in other domains of a young person’s life are also poor. According to Child Welfare Services, children living without the presence of either parent rose from 2,669

in 1997 to 3,326 in 1999. Cases of neglect have also doubled from

91 cases confirmed in 1995 to 203 in 1999. These numbers illustrate the early onset of ice use, as well as the disintegration of the

family unit.

In response, Hawaii County has developed a system of prevention programs, effective treatment options, and law enforcement resources to prosecute ice-related crime. Community based drug prevention programs is an important facet of Hawaii Island’s strategy.

The Pulama project administered by the Bay Clinic and funded

through a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health

Services Administration extend prevention resources and services

island-wide by collaborating with other non-profit and government

agencies.

In the area of treatment the role and acceptance of drug treatment and addiction from a public health perspective has gained

widespread acceptance in the community. The Third Circuit Court

of Hawaii island has initiated Drug Court based on national models

as an alternative for convicted drug users. The response by the

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community has been very positive with citizen groups asking what

type of supports are needed.

Another welcome addition to the array of services available to

you is an on-island adolescent treatment facility. County, State,

and Federal agencies along with community-based organizations

have developed a program grounded and tested and effective methods and incorporated experiential and cultural components.

Law enforcement is the next critical piece in controlling ice and

reducing the available supply. Hawaii County Police Department in

cooperation with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Attorney’s

Office, and the County of Hawaii Prosecutor’s office have formed an

ice task force to identify, arrest, and prosecute ice dealers.

The last piece in this effort is community empowerment. Over

the last 2 years we have seen mobilization of citizen groups on an

unprecedented scale from neighborhood watch groups to coordinating island-wide anti-ice sign waving events to community coalitions

engaging in community planning. The citizens of Hawaii island understand their stake in this effort and have risen to the challenge.

The Federal Government’s support of community-based prevention and treatment programs along with the continued presence of

Federal law enforcement are an integral supports of Hawaii island’s ice strategy. In addition, Federal assistance to communities

and neighborhoods to complete assessments and action plans help

to empower citizens.

In closing, the ice epidemic has caused a wide array of social

problems for children and families of Hawaii island. The aforementioned statistics pull at our sense of responsibility and motivate us

to act. I have given you an abbreviated glimpse of the four aspects

of Hawaii County’s response to the ice problem to illustrate the cohesiveness of our community. We hope for continued support from

the Federal Government to purge our island paradise of ice.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Salavea follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Dr. Wasan.

STATEMENT OF JAMAL WASAN, LOKAHI TREATMENT

PROGRAM

Dr. WASAN. A very famous philosopher once said: ‘‘Once you label

me, you negate me.’’ And I think a lot of it comes with dealing with

rehabilitation for those who are suffering from ice. I think at times

we forget where they come from and who they really are.

I am, personally, myself, in recovery, a recovering addict. I was

wounded twice in Vietnam, was hospitalized, ended up becoming

addicted to Demerol and when I got out of the hospital, stayed on

Darvocet and used marijuana for quite a long time. I read a book

back in 1970 called Man Searches for Meaning by a person named

Victor Franco. In that book it talked about having had a reason,

a why to change one’s life. And once you have that, you’ll find how.

I came to this island in 1993 after successfully completing my

own recovery and going back into the military where I retired as

colonel for the United States Air Force. I came to this island and

I began to work for a place called BISAC, Big Island Substance

Abuse Council, and they were dealing at that time—the big issue

was not methamphetamine. It was crack cocaine. This was 1993.

And at that time we were told this drug is the most intensive,

most addictive drug we’ve ever run across. Now, unfortunately,

we’re involved with methamphetamine. I’m here to tell you when

methamphetamine goes, there will be another drug that will come

along because that’s how it works. The question was asked before

about cannabis or marijuana, THC, marijuana is a multiphasic

drug which is why you will find that people who use

methamphetamines will also use THC because it takes of edge off

of the effect of ice itself.

It also helps to stimulate their appetite which is something

that—in the 1980’s and 1990’s we had the diet pill which were

methamphetamine based which were used to prevent or block appetites. So therefore, THC helps those who are involved with

methamphetamines to get an appetite.

I think another issue I really want to address and I put it in here

is that having lived on this island in 1993 and understanding the

population and working with some very, I should say, renowned

people who have been working very hard to deal with this problem,

talking about Kanaka Maoles and others, churches, we need to

really—the question was asked if I could ask Congress what they

could do that could help; I think managed care needs a push in the

butt.

If there’s two-in-a-lifetime treatment for substance abuse, is

there something wrong with that? If I have cancer and I get cured

from cancer, if I get it again, I’m going to be treated. If I go in remission, and I get it again, I’ll be treated.

We talk about methamphetamines or addiction as being something that is a disease and it is. It’s biologically based. It does have

signs and symptoms and it does have predictable outcomes, and we

know that is the definition of a disease. Yet, when it comes down

to treating our addiction process, we often forget that and not treat

it the same way it should be.

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There are rehabilitation programs. I personally believe that this

drug did not come about because it just happened. A vacuum was

created on these islands. There was at one time a very dynamic

culture here that involved the sugar plantation, pineapple production on other islands. People had a sense and source of identity just

like Victor Franco talks about his in book. They knew who they

were. The plantation who carried so many things, medical, churches, schools, recreational. A lot of things happened.

When that began to demise—and by the way, pakalolo was here

for a long time or marijuana was here a long time and was taken

as a nonabusive drug. People just used it. It, actually, was creating

an island of addicts. I mean it is a drug. If you take someone off

from marijuana, they will go through withdrawal symptoms. It was

already there.

But you had this plantation environment which was containing

families. Families had a place to go to church, they had community

projects they could participate in. Then hotels came and thus we

have the tourist industry. That caused a vacuum because that is

not the dominant culture for these islands. We’re agriculture.

So all of a sudden you’re working down in tourism, you’re working with the high end, but you’re given minimum wage salaries.

That required people had to work double wage shifts, double jobs,

longer hours. Guess what, methamphetamine is a methamphetamine, it will allow me to work 12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours, it

will keep me up.

It was a natural consequence that occurred and we take it away

and create a vacuum. You take away the marijuana which was

done under new harvest which was a major drug and you do this

for the hotels, you got a problem. Then we go around and we try

to say people are not going in for treatment or they need treatment

and we place the facilities on this island where they can’t even get

treatment. There is no transportation on this island. Something

needs to be done about that.

Voc rehab is a significant part of treatment. We talked about

having a reason for recovery and that is the fundamentally why.

The how has to include voc rehabilitation. When I finish treatment,

what am I supposed to do then? Or when I get out of residential—

residential doesn’t work. The stats show that residential and outpatient programs are about the same, unless you add something

different.

And that’s what Billy Kenoi is trying to do here. You have to add

another piece that goes back to identity and also establish some

type of after program where the child is then able to then step back

in the community and find that he’s not only accepted in the community, but he has a place. And that often comes from jobs, my

self-esteem, my self-identity.

There’s a lot that needs to be done. I think Mayor Harry Kim has

done tremendously by stepping up to the plate, talking to Senator

Daniel Inouye to bring down here, bring you all down here and

bring the money in. But as we very well know, you can’t just throw

money at something and expect that to cure it.

I mean I’m a Vietnam veteran. They threw a bunch of money in

Vietnam and it didn’t do anything, right. It didn’t cure anything.

You can’t do that with this problem either.

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This is a war. BISAC, Kevin Kunz is not here, but there are different services and we’re joining together around this island to try

and do what we can to stop it. This is a simple old soldier, but I

know the enemy is in front of me. I know how to deal with it. The

enemy in front of us right now is methamphetamine. We know how

to deal with it.

The county needs to be given more direct funding to be able to

do that. I’m not a big State supporter when it comes to that. I believe that at times you need to go to the people who know what

the problem is and how to deal with it, and that’s the people we

elect in our county and that’s our mayor and that’s our council.

They need to be given more grants and aid. They’re the ones who

call us together. They’re they ones that go around the island, Billy

Kenoi, Mayor Kim, go to high schools, go to the churches and talk.

That’s where the funding needs to be hitting more and more of and

less to the State where it gets tied up.

If you put it like an old grunt that I was in Vietnam, I know

what I’m dealing with and give us the resources, we’ll do something about it. And I hope that my testimony will prompt you all

to do something about managed care and get them to stop playing

these silly games and provide treatment for people and also provide

more funding directly to the community which is to the county.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Wasan follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your testimony. Let me ask Dr.

Wasan, but the others as well, you’re not arguing that drug abuse

is predominantly concentrated among the poor.

Dr. WASAN. No, I’m not. If you look at Beverly Hills and L.A.,

cocaine was the drug of choice. Freud created the cocaine epidemic

in Europe. No, I’m not saying that. What I’m trying to say is that

when you take away something that is very meaningful to whatever people, that creates a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Something else is going to rush in and take its place.

In this case what has happened is we’ve had a whole economy

that came in place, that economy also wanted to have results, profit. In order to do that, at times I have to make my people work

extra hard, double shifts. And when I do that and they’re driving

halfway across this island because there is no transportation system, people offer me something. I went to college, what did we use,

stay awake to study longer, caffeine.

Mr. SOUDER. I understand that point, but what my question is

that—this is a huge debate. I can understand that part of the economy, but are you saying that the middle class doesn’t abuse meth

here and the upper class doesn’t abuse meth here, it’s only in that

group that’s highly stressed.

Dr. WASAN. Well, if you look at who’s coming into treatment,

that’s what you’re seeing.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, that’s what I want to know because it’s not

true in other parts of the country.

Dr. WASAN. If you look at who’s coming into treatment on this

island, you’re going to find those that are underserved and under

privileged. That’s who you find coming into treatment. Now, I do

know——

Mr. SOUDER. Are you talking about government funded-based

treatment or private facilities? Do the wealthier groups send their

family members who are having treatment in the private facilities

that may or may not be here or be in Honolulu?

Dr. WASAN. Right. I do know people who have sent their family

members back to facilities on the mainland, in California for

$35,000 a month so yeah.

Mr. SOUDER. In the schools where you could do the tracking of

this, do you find that kids from middle and upper income families

have less of a meth problem than those from lower income families?

Dr. WASAN. I do know that the kids that I’m aware of who go

to HPA or Parker School, $12,000 a year to go to HPA, there is a

marijuana problem and that’s there. There is a problem there. But

as far as methamphetamine, I have not seen a rush on that among

the adolescent. I’ve seen marijuana. But remember what I just

said, though, once you get addicted to marijuana, you’ve already

created an addict. It’s simple, you give me another drug and I’ll try

it.

Mr. SOUDER. Any of the others jump in on any of these questions.

Let me followup with that. One of the big debates we’re having is

how to concentrate on drugs. There is no question that marijuana

is overwhelmingly the No. 1 drug of choice. 60 percent of people in

treatment in the United States are with marijuana. As THC goes

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up, it’s becoming a greater problem, greater violence problem,

greater problem on the road.

One of the arguments is, only 8 percent of the Nation has a meth

problem. It’s certainly higher here. But one of the arguments we’ve

heard in the hearings is that meth grips you differently. In other

words, when you hit ice, it’s like all you think about is your next

hit, it’s tough to work, it’s tough to do other things, and it’s a little

like ecstasy in the sense that addiction may be even greater.

Is that true? Do you agree with that?

Dr. WASAN. I would agree that the addiction to methamphetamine like crack cocaine happens more rapidly. It’s because of the

effect that your memory is pushing out the normetanephrine which

allows you to be stronger, more alert. It’s like taking a 75 watt

light bulb and making it a 150 watt light bulb so you can see everything and you can do more. And that’s a very strong draw, especially if I’m working in a position that I need to be hyperalert. It’s

a very strong draw.

Mr. SOUDER. We haven’t heard this. In fact, we’ve heard the reverse, that ice doesn’t enable you to work. It may be like No Doze,

super caffeine keeping you awake at a certain level, but at what

point does it debilitate you? In other words, you’re starting to make

errors at work that are substantial. Pretty soon the impact on your

brain cells is like marijuana because it has a lazy effect in many

cases.

Dr. WASAN. Right, right, the motivational reference. What you’re

saying is true, but not initially. The more you use methamphetamine, it creates a neurotoxin that causes brain damage, memory

loss, and paranoia, amphetamine psychosis kind of thing. They repetitive in what they’re doing so that’s nonproductive, but initially,

no, like any other amphetamine, it’s going to boost me and I think

I can do more.

Mr. SOUDER. It’s like the rock stars taking a hit before the concert.

Dr. WASAN. Right, right. It’s a long-term what you’re talking

about when reverse effect occurs, because remember the body can

only sustain this for so long. This endorphin which is blocked from

the brain and keeps me agitated and moving around and moving

and moving. The body can only take so much of that and begins

to shut down; my ability to concentrate.

Mr. SOUDER. And then in the treatment, how do you treat a drug

like ice? We’ve heard that it’s much harder in treatment organizations to get a treatment for ice like crack, as opposed to many of

the other drugs. Your points about fallback is true and depends

whether the family is abusing and whether they have a job, I understand that portion, but the actual physical addiction, is it substantially harder to treat than other drugs.

Dr. WASAN. It takes a longer period of time, I would say, to treat

and that’s because of the neurological deficits that also occur,

whereas in marijuana it tends to be faster; crack cocaine—you

know, cocaine is not a neurotoxin. So yeah, you can be able to—

your brain and body compensates quicker than it would from a

methamphetamine. Treatment does need to be longer.

I think the thing we have to understand is that because addiction is a process, it’s going to go through precontemplation, I don’t

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got a problem; contemplation, I think maybe I need to work on this;

and action, I really am working on it and I’m in treatment. The

final stage is maintenance, and that’s going to be for a lifetime.

So if the drug is still out there, I need to have a strong barrier

between me and that drug. You know what, I can say the same

thing about marijuana and crack cocaine, so the treatment may be

longer. And I also need to have an integrated treatment approach.

I need to have medical, I need to have psychiatric when I’m treating methamphetamines? Not necessarily so if I’m treating marijuana or alcoholism, but if I’m treating methamphetamines, yes, I

do which is why the expense for treating methamphetamine may

be more because I need a more stronger, specialized integrative

staff than to treat, say, alcohol, for example.

Mr. SOUDER. Now, in California which is the only other place I’ve

heard this particular thing, meth addicts are the one group that

they don’t want their children. If you take them into child custody,

often they don’t want them back particularly if they’re a cooker.

And I would be interested in the prosecutor’s office’s comments

about that, too.

That suggests there is something also very different going on in

this drug than other drugs, if they don’t have the normal family

attachment for their kids.

Dr. WASAN. Again, if you’re talking about the disease and biologically based organism neurotoxin, it does cause deficits within

the brain. In other words, tissue begins to die. Methamphetamine,

the chemical that’s produced in it, causes a neurotoxin effect that

does tend to cause organic damage to the brain.

This is why you have certain behavior changes because of the

loss of impulse control, damage to the neocortex, damage to the

temporal lobe. It does deduce that. The only way you’re going to

find that is if you have them in treatment for a longer period of

time and you have these specialists looking at that. Then you can

design a real legitimate program around that to help them overcome these deficits—or I should say not overcome them necessarily,

but to compensate for these deficits.

And this is one of the things that has not been happening, and

although a number of us have said this for a period of time, it’s

only just now that I found the first opportunity to be able to sit

and talk with you. And if Dr. Kevin Kunz, he’s is a physician, were

here, he would share some of the things I talked about because it

is a neurologically based problem, but it’s being addressed more as

a behavioral problem than it is being addressed as an organic problem or physical problem because it is.

Mr. SOUDER. Congressman Case.

Mr. CASE. Let me back up and then we’ll come back to rehabilitation and talk about prevention.

We’ve got law enforcement, we’ve heard about that. We’re talking

about rehabilitation, but let me focus on prevention just for a second with you, Mr. Salavea, because I think your testimony goes to

prevention.

There was a comment by the Chair earlier that the national stats

show that ice use may be declining. I think this is a fair statement

of what you said, ice use may be declining among youth, but we’re

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seeing it accelerated among young adults and that’s simply a [inaudible] going through.

Mr. SOUDER. In Hawaii.

Mr. CASE. In Hawaii, which implies that since we’re not having

the same type of demographics going through, that we’re doing

something right. What is it? First of all, are we doing something

right and what is it we’re doing right in terms of prevention? What

is keeping more kids—if that’s true, what’s keeping more kids off

ice and stable through high school.

Mr. SALAVEA. That’s an interesting question and we notice

through analyzing the statistics from the surveys, that was a trend

that, like you mentioned, Chairman, a tipping point for us to take

advantage of. And as far as what—if we are doing things right, I

think we are.

My testimony really went to the heart or speaking of the cohesiveness of the community, and we have these terrific leaders and

motivators like Billy Kenoi to get the community work done and to

buy into the problem of ice and methamphetamine abuse here. And

from that the community has taken the—taken the initiative and

in some instances formed their own community coalitions.

The North Hawaii Drug-Free Coalition is a terrific example of

how citizen empowerment really—investment in that movement

really has a multiplier effect. You bring in the businesses, you

bring in the volunteer help, you bring in the moms, the dads, the

civic organizations located in this particular area. And you’re able

to take advantage of that human resource and use your dollars for

direct—to get directly out to the community, as opposed to paying

a full-time position with benefits, so I think that’s one huge component.

The second thing is probably the—because we come from an island that may not have the same amount of resources as, say, like

Honolulu, we’ve learned over the past 20, 25, 30 years to do more

with less and that just has been a tradition.

When I got into the prosecutor’s office and we started doing community assessments and surveys to find out what some of the

issues were, the other agencies came to the table readily and they

put out their resources for everyone to use and to see how we can

work together to more effectively do our jobs and that continues to

today.

So you don’t have this rift between or competition between agencies and that’s what we really like to work on or utilize when you

bring together projects. It’s not about who’s going to get the big

piece of the pie, rather it’s who can provide the best services to the

most amount of people for the lowest cost and effectively do that

as a team.

Mr. CASE. Do you do it mostly through the schools? Is that the

most effective way to get to the kids?

Mr. SALAVEA. The school is definitely a rally point. We’re fortunate to have a lot of DOE personnel. Their primary objective is

with the education of a child, but it’s being hindered by drug use

and in this case methamphetamine. So they understand and they

come to the table with the hope that if we help them get kids off

of drugs, then they can do their jobs better of educating the kids,

so definitely the DOE is a big partner.

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Mr. CASE. I’m focusing more on kids not getting on drugs to start

with. We’re trying to take care of what’s working. You can track

the smoking thing, for example. In Australia they show the brain

autopsy to—and we’re getting close to that here. I know that something like that is happening in the schools.

Is that where that preventive education effort is going? I guess

I’m trying to get a sense of what works in preventive education.

What exactly works, or is there just no standard way of doing it?

Do you do it differently with a community that has more churches,

you go through the churches versus some others?

Dr. WASAN. There was a book that I’m trying to think of the author’s name. I think it was Dale Matthews, and they did a study

with the public health system down in Texas. And they found that

prevention and preventing relapse, they’re looking at a real spiritual basis. The churches—as a matter of fact, I think one study

was done in 1985 or 1992 or 1996 and it said that the prevention

for youth turning to drugs or alcohol was the father’s spiritual belief, his value system.

The public health did a study with heroin addicts, for example,

and they found those that got involved with spiritual-based or

church-based beliefs after 1 year were in a 90 percent not relapse,

but 90 percent recovery.

So we need to be able to support those people that are involved

with the churches and faith-based group organizations. We need to

be able to provide more support for prevention for those that are

involved in culturally based programs, and that will serve prevention.

Remember, like I said before, if I have an identity of who I am,

I’m less likely to go off that side because it brings shame on me

and my ancestors.

I need to know that.

Mr. CASE. Comment. I would love to see an empirical study drug

and ice abuse among children in Native Hawaiians because I’ll bet

you anything that you would see some amazing things going on

there which is exactly the point you’re making.

Mr. SALAVEA. In regards to your question to the DOE, we do

things here in each individual community differently based on

what resources are available. Sometimes the staff or logistically it

may not be feasible to do the education and prevention in the

schools, and therefore, be partnered with a community base. But

the key is identifying what is the strength and then working off of

that.

And the model is, what we try to do, is once you come up with

a successful method and this is the area of community planning,

you use that method or you match up a community with similar

demographics, similar resources to a previous model that’s worked.

And then that way you can show them that, OK, with what you

have, you’re able to take on a prevention program and develop an

action plan based on your strengths, not looking at your weaknesses but understanding your strengths and then working from

there.

The big part that we’ve begun to do better I think in Hawaii

County, and this goes back to your first question, Representative,

is we’re getting outreach. We’re publicizing what we’re doing and

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making sure that the community at the lowest levels, local neighborhoods, understand that, one, there is an ice problem; and two,

from the clinical standpoint it’s not all about persons having a personal weakness for a particular substance, it’s a disease; and three,

there are things you can do as a citizen and get involved.

And it’s replicating that message over and over and telling people to get involved because look at what north Hawaii did, look at

what Ka’u is doing, look at what Kohala is doing. It’s the representation of the message over and over to the other communities that

may not be as geared up or effective, that’s helping a lot.

Mr. CASE. Mr. Hashida, let me ask you about rehabilitation.

Does rehabilitation of crystal methamphetamine, specifically ice,

does it have to be so expensive to be effective? Is there any proven,

medically proven, because I do agree with you it’s a medical condition—does it have to cost $325 a day?

Mr. HASHIDA. That’s a good question. Our agency every year collects outcome data on all of our programs, and we can kind of take

a look at everything. We are finding that there are extensive services that need to be put in place for treatment—what we call, treatment outcomes and goals to be met, and unfortunately, it does cost

money.

Like, for example, one of the programs that we can do, a client

can come in and we have a program therapeutic living services, a

house, 24/7 type of coverage, and then 30 days they go into what’s

called outpatient treatment which again costs more money.

The other side of that is they also attend what’s called silver support networks which are 12-step groups which are also very effective.

Mr. CASE. What’s the success rate of one of those programs?

What is the fall off the wagon, if that’s the right way to put it? Are

there any stats on how many people are addicted, medically addicted to ice and go through a recognized, supervised treatment

program and stay off.

Mr. HASHIDA. I can take a look and send some information over

to your office about exact stats with specific programs.

Mr. CASE. Just off the top of your head.

Mr. HASHIDA. 30, 40 percent, but that sounds really low. But in

actuality, when you compare that to other programs, that’s pretty

decent.

Mr. CASE. That puts a little bit more emphasis on prevention.

Mr. HASHIDA. Yeah, yeah. I think at the schools and also in the

community levels the programs are making an impact. They’re creating a sense of urgency so a school teacher or counselor or somebody can identify a potential kid, if there is an ice problem.

There is an urgency there. We get calls, things roll, things happen to prevent that kid from going into further trouble with ice.

Even when you talk to the kids, they understand that it’s a dangerous drug. They don’t minimize it, it’s just like cigarettes or

pakalolo. They know it’s a lot more serious. Some of the programs

they’ve talked about definitely has made an impact on them, but

prevention is the way.

Mr. CASE. Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. It’s interesting because one of the things I’ve heard

was that part of the reason behind the drop here is that all of a

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sudden every elected official and television station and the news

stories, say that meth is terrible. The concentrated effort of the

community over time seems to have had an impact, at least in the

youth thing which is interesting because one of the greatest myths

in America is ‘‘Just Say No’’ didn’t work. In fact, ‘‘Just Say No’’

dropped drug use in the United States 8 straight years.

It wasn’t ‘‘Just Say No,’’ that was the starter. Say no, and then

you do all the other stuff to help the addicts, to reinforce that

through prevention, you still arrest people on the roads. Nobody

ever did ‘‘Just Say No,’’ but if you don’t start with ‘‘Just Say No’’

it is very difficult to move through. And you made an interesting

case of that because you’ve had bipartisan, cross party, cross—

when Congressman Case first came to the committee, I know that

we really weren’t focused on the meth problems and drug problems

in Hawaii.

Senators have a lot easier chance to write things into a bill than

we do on the House side. We start low in the budget and then they

get to add the add-ons and then we scramble to get part of the

credit is about the way the system works. But often we’ll lay the

groundwork for which they can then put the things in and there

was a bipartisan effort coming in on meth.

The same thing is happening with tobacco, that when we grab

it as a community, we can start to get that. My understanding that

I hadn’t heard in other places, and this is an interesting cultural

question and I don’t know where the subgroup would be and where

in the community, that some people here in Hawaii have seen family clusters doing drugs together. And we see that in a few parts

of the United States with a couple types of drugs, but could you

describe that here and do you see that in meth?

Mr. SALAVEA. Are you referring to—when you say family, is

that——

Mr. SOUDER. Mother and dad and the kids at the same time.

Mr. SALAVEA. If you talk about marijuana or pakalolo, it’s almost

at the level of—its use is almost as casual as drinking alcohol.

When you go to family parties, that’s one of the—used to be one

of the old initiations into adulthood for a young boy, when you get

to sit down and drink beer with your dad. When you did that, you

were a man.

Marijuana in my opinion, and from what I know of from my personal experience, my family, and my friends, approaches that level

of use or has that type of community norm associated with it.

When you’re able to smoke in front of your parents, smoke marijuana in front of your parents, you’ve crossed into adulthood and

now it’s OK for you.

One characteristic of ice that makes it extremely attractive to

local people is the fact that it’s smokeable. If you asked—if meth

users or addicts had to inject meth, I don’t think we would have

the same problem here today. It’s a cultural thing that, yeah, it’s

being done in family groups, in pods. I know a lot of parties where

you go to a party and you can pick out every relative who smokes

pakalolo. And as soon as they disappear, you go out the door with

them because they’re going to light up.

Mr. SOUDER. Give me the challenge for treatment here because

what we hear in treatment hearings is—the common thing is

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enablers. In other words, alcohol you hear it, wife doesn’t want to

crack down, doesn’t want to get in an argument, kind of lets it go,

kids tend to get out of the way. We’re not talking enablers here.

How in the world do you treat somebody if they go right back into

the family and everybody is smoking pot and maybe doing meth,

too?

Do you have a family drug treatment? In other words, if somebody checks themself into drug treatment, if that’s the type of culture you’re dealing with, taking individuals is almost irrelevant,

and you don’t bring the family in for 1 day to say, hey, or 3 days,

this guy is going to be coming out of drug treatment, how are you

going to help him. Well, one thing would be go into drug treatment

yourself.

Are there programs that are oriented if you get somebody like—

somebody comes in at 18 and says my parents are doing the drug

as well, my brothers and sisters, do you approach the whole family,

try to get them in together? How do you deal with this? This is a

little bit different.

Dr. WASAN. You hit a very natural track there, too. They will not

do ice with their kids. You’ll hear them say I’d rather have my

child do marijuana or pakalolo at home, or smoking cigarettes, at

least I know what he’s doing, so you’ll see that happening.

But I have yet to meet anybody in my treatment program that

will sit and smoke ice with their children. They’ll say the opposite.

I’ll smoke in the bathroom, I’ll smoke it outside because they do

understand there is a difference here.

Now, the other piece, though, and because this is the hard concept to sell on the islands because it’s transgenerational. Marijuana

has been considered to be OK because it doesn’t lead to violent

crimes.

It’s antimotivational. Who wants to fight me doped up on marijuana, right, so it’s more of a hard sell.

You have to bring families into treatment with, as we call it in

mental health, the identified patient. It may be the child, it may

be the parent, you have to bring a family in. Most treatment when

you look at the research will say that, that you have to have the

family component added as part of treatment.

Now, has that happened a lot, probably not, but it should. And

why hasn’t it happened a lot. Well, managed care isn’t going to pay

for that straight out. Managed care will only pay for the identified

patient for treatment. It will not pay for the family treatment like

that, they don’t believe in it, right. So that’s a problem.

So in order to be able to do that, you have to get grants or funding that goes specifically for groups like Parenting Net Inc. or people who are certified in parenting and even getting involved in getting faith based who does family treatment a lot.

It needs to be targeted that way.

Right now it is not targeted that way. The purpose of bringing

an adolescent residential program on this island, and Billy is definitely correct with that, 70 percent, I heard the number as high as

70 percent, of the people involved in adolescent treatment off island

were from this island. To bring the treatment on this island, allows

the families to be involved in treatment and it should be a required

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component. I imagine it actually is. I can’t say for sure or not. But

that is a natural draw, you have to have the family.

Now, what that will do at least will make it an awareness. I

don’t think most people who smoke marijuana on this island really

think it’s a drug.

They haven’t had to sit down and really go through the process

of addiction. They could if they were put into a treatment.

Mr. SOUDER. Is there a way in any of your data to check when

a person comes out? 30 to 40 percent is probably a 1-year tracking

not a multiyear tracking and also if you can get any data in from

any of your organizations to see if any of them kept multiyear

tracking. It might be actually a little bit easier for multiyear here

because you’re not as mobile. In the end I’m going to go to Ohio

and Michigan and Illinois, and then the differences between, say,

one relapse, three lapses, and serious falling back to being an addict, because there are substantial differences.

But in that 30 to 40 percent, what are the differences if no one

else in the family is a drug abuser? In other words, if you kick

somebody out—somebody graduates from the drug treatment,

they’re clean, if they’re family is using marijuana or ice, I would

assume their chances of fallback are much greater than if they’re

the loan user in that family. And if so, that’s the type of statistic

that would be helpful in making the argument that the problem is

beyond the individual.

Otherwise, we’re just spending money. Nobody has ever worked

this issue. You can go anywhere and guys will tell you I’ve been

to seven drug treatment programs, I’ve been to 10 drug treatment

programs. I know how to hustle, I know how to pass the drug test.

I know what they want to hear, I can say the words they want to

say, once they learn to beat the system.

And the question is this: How do we figure out some of the—and

one of them is if you put them back in the conditions that were

there beforehand, and if the family is the condition, this is huge

because if it’s the job, you can move them here, you got a locational

thing that’s more problematic than other areas. But, if it’s the family, then you’re in the position of the only way to rehab a drug addict is get them away from the family which is a pretty nasty concept.

Mr. SALAVEA. I just wanted to mention we do see that, family dynamic going on, and some of the families are huge. There are huge

families. Every corner you turn there are family members.

Mr. SOUDER. Extended family problems, we should make sure we

note that in the record because that will be different than any

other—when you say that, elaborate on that a little bit.

Mr. SALAVEA. Yeah, the family extensions can go quite a bit in

terms of a small town. That’s another factor to think about. The

way we approach this is I’ll tell a client, for example, you’ve done

the treatment successfully, you want to continue to be successful,

some of your family members—you just can’t go back and live in

that same house. You can still have family members and they may

or may not seek treatment. They may not be in recovery, but you’re

not going to be living in that kind of environment and that’s how

we try to deal with them.

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Just to add a little bit more answer to that question, I was discussing with one of the members in the audience previously, when

you’re part of the scene and you’re in it, it seems like everyone is

doing it. And when you get out of it, it seems like it’s a minority,

but you’re on the other side of the glass, so to speak, and you don’t

really see the depth or the extent of it, the true extent.

And in getting back to your question about how do you deal with

someone who in the family environment is the enabler or that trigger that will make that person relapse, another part of the adolescent treatment is the cultural component where many of these

youth or teenagers have grown up in a cultural family of drug

abuse, alcohol abuse, addiction where it’s become—not their second

nature, it’s what life is and that’s all they know.

An important aspect is to make them aware that you are not

bound by what your family has exposed you to, and therefore, you

can set your own sights on where you want to go and use cultural

activities, cultural education, history to show that person that you

don’t come from a long line of addicts and that’s your destiny,

that’s the only way you’re going to go. That addiction began one,

maybe two generations ago and it’s not that deep and it’s not farfetched for you as an individual to make a total, clean break from

it.

And in that process, that education process, the person begins to

understand, you empower that person and they believe that I am

the master of my own destiny and even though my family may

choose to do that, I choose not to. And therefore, like counselors

from BISAC, you don’t have to spend as much time monitoring the

individual because that person will for themselves be making the

decision. No, that’s not my choice, I choose to live a different lifestyle.

Dr. WASAN. I want to add one more piece. Just so you know, the

communities on this island were stepping forth long before the

funds were given. The Lokahi Treatment Center began in the back

room of a church with a counsel one, by myself, but they gave me

a building to start it with, they gave me support. I received no

funding at that point from the State or from the feds or anyone

else. I did receive some funding from the Dr. Earl Bakken Foundation to help me.

We were then given a free location in Kohala because the community said we need help up here. We were then given a location

in Hilo for 3 months free to come in. The community is stepping

forward. And they couldn’t give any money, but what they could

give was I’ll give you space, I’ll give you the time. The people who

were coming for treatment were not even able to pay for the treatment, they had yet not been on QUEST or been able to afford the

treatment so we treated them for free based on what we were getting from Dr. Earl Bakken. And then the community supplied other

means of support.

So this project or this program or this treatment was going on

before the Feds and the State stepped in and helped, and will continue. What you all have done is provided us a way to up the ante

a little bit. Now we have agencies that are accredited. We’re an integrated—we’re the only integrated programs on these islands

that’s accredited. We have Dr. Kevin Kunz who’s accredited. You’ve

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allowed us now to step up to the bar, raise the level, bring in the

people to work on this problem and that has helped a large, large

amount.

I do see the numbers dropping of those in my program from relapsing and coming back. Something is happening. I see the faithbased communities stepping in and filling the gaps. So I truly

thank you for the support you have given us to allow us to raise

the bar on treatment and that’s what we’re trying to do.

You’re absolutely correct, prevention is the key and getting—as

I said before, getting families involved, supporting the churches

more, supporting the cultural programs more. That’s the true preventive key. Once I know who I am, I have a less chance of going

that direction. I don’t want to bring shame.

I’ll say it over and over again, this culture is based on that. You

do not want to bring shame on our ancestors, those who are of a

Polynesian or Japanese or Asian ancestry. You do not want to do

that. And one of the ways you’re helping them not to do that is allowing the cultural and faith-based programs to be strengthened to

give them a place to go and learn who they are.

Mr. CASE. I don’t have any more questions, other than to say

thank you and to the people who came before you and to the audience who has stayed with us throughout. Trying to be an observer

in the hearing, I think you’ve seen the best of Congress, a good person who cares, down here trying to make a difference, so we want

to thank him very much, Chairman Souder, for joining us this

afternoon.

We have a tremendous need across our country. We have tremendous resources and the resources are stretched. There are many

things Congress needs to attend to. This is one of the opportunities,

to come down in our community and have the community so eloquently state to Congress for the record that is being taken what

we are, what we need, and what we want, and what we are doing

is truly a great opportunity.

I think we have seen here today the similarities that we share

with many parts of our country in terms of the drug war such as

this epidemic of ice. We’ve also seen the differences that we have

here. Differences in not only needs and challenges but also in opportunities and solutions. I think, in fact, we have been given a

rare opportunity to provide really an [inaudible] for our country, an

opportunity that no one in the entire country has had.

Unfortunately, we got that opportunity because we have a problem, but we also have the opportunity to demonstrate a solution

that’s going to work for our entire country. And I think we should

all feel a sense of responsibility especially for the people that are

responsible—I certainly feel a responsibility to assist you, the people that are on the ground, actually dealing with this on an every

day basis and whether you’re dealing with law enforcement and

prevention, or whether you’re dealing with it with rehabilitation.

That’s a very tough job you’re doing. We appreciate very much

what you’re doing.

I guess I just want to close by telling you a little bit of a story.

This is another one of those police station stories. I get a lot of information from communities from dropping into the local police stations and finding the lowest ranking police officer and asking him

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or her what’s happened. In the hierarchy sometimes you’ll lose

something in the translation.

This was in Hana and it was at the very beginning of my term

and I wandered into that community. Now, many of us would not

think especially, if we’re in Oahu central, that Hana would have

an ice problem. It does have an ice problem. A community incredibly deep-knitted culturally, remote, you would think that perhaps

there wouldn’t be as much of a challenge there, but it is.

And I walked in and I asked the police officer what is your No.

1 challenge in Hana, and he said ‘‘ice.’’ I said, ‘‘What’s happening?’’

He said, ‘‘Well, we don’t have enough of any of the three things,

prevention, rehabilitation, or law enforcement.’’ The community is

like many of this island, remote, far away, supply land, if you put

it that way, are stretched. The assets are tending to be focused on

the highly centralized population areas.

And I said, ‘‘Many bright spots.’’ He said, ‘‘You know, something

amazing has happened in the last couple of months.’’ He said, ‘‘For

many, many it is very hard for us in law enforcement to do anything about ‘ice’ because, essentially, we stood against the entire

community.’’

Ice users were being sheltered by their families, they were being

sheltered by their friends. We would find out after the fact that the

drug deal was going down. We knew who was having a problem,

but we could never really get in on it.

What has happened in the last couple months is we’ve seen more

family members, more community members just saying no, and not

saying no because they didn’t like their family or friends that were

using but because they cared about their family and friends.

They cared to turn people in that they knew, that they had

grown up with, that had gone back generations and within that

very small, deep-knitted cultural community. And they were just

saying for the good of us all, we need to put a stop to this.

And I think what you have on the Big Island is a much better

realization of that because this island amazingly has really led the

way, in terms of the entire island, many different cultures, many

different people, many different socioeconomics, saying that they

care about this problem collectively, we’re going to do something

about it.

And I think if we can keep that spirit going, if we can continue

to maintain an attitude that this is all of our problem, every single

one of us, whether we have friends or family or know somebody

that is using, dealing, manufacturing, and whatever literally they

might do, and help in whatever way we can, any one of these three

categories, enforcement, prevention, or rehabilitation, I have absolutely no doubt we can eliminate this problem.

Your Federal Government is here to help you, help all of us with

our challenges. Again, I thank you for the effort that you have put

in on the ground in assisting all of us and I thank your elected officials who have cared about this and for bringing these committee

hearings to this island. Mahalo.

Mr. SOUDER. I want to thank our treatment and prevention people. By tradition, this committee always starts with its Federal witnesses who are predominantly Federal oversight agencies and we

move through. But we always try to include the treatment and preVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:48 Mar 03, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00125 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\98604.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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vention people in every hearing because without the grass roots

working away with individuals one at a time, you can only do so

much in the larger picture too. Tell your staff, too, and all the organizations they work with, we appreciate their work.

There are a couple of general things I wanted to mention, too,

in addition to thanking Congressman Case, again, and the others

who have been so hospitable here. Our committee has broad jurisdiction and we probably spend 60 percent of our time on narcotics.

We spent a lot of time in this past year because we also oversee

the office of faith-based initiatives, so we’ve been doing a number

of regional hearings with that.

And one of the things that is real interesting in narcotics abuse

is that everyone, regardless of their approach or feeling about that

issue, realizes that unless an individual makes a commitment to

change somewhere along the way, aren’t probably going to get off,

and certainly they aren’t going to stay off. And one of the key elements of that is a faith experience, and we’ve seen some pretty

amazing stories that can do it for far less than $325 a day, if, indeed, they make a personal commitment to change their life.

Now, if they don’t make that personal commitment, even then

you need to have monitoring and support groups, but a major philosophical change often anchored in religion that says I am going

to hell, I am going to change my life, I am destroying my family,

I am going to change. Then if you don’t have that, then the drug

testing, the job training, the other types of support become even

more critical because internally, they haven’t made that change.

You have to use more and more external factors. It’s amazing when

somebody has made a dynamic change. All of a sudden their attitude toward education changes, their attitude toward how they’re

going to show up for work changes, there are other mental things

that come out of that. So that certainly should be an element that

goes in the mix and we’ve been trying to work with that around

the country. And by the way, it isn’t just for drug treatment, it’s

in a lot of different areas.

I appreciate you bringing that point out because it’s a critical

part because much of this is mental. Yes, it’s physical, but it’s also

mental, and particularly the recovery has to be mental, at least

after the first stages of addiction as you get over the physical part.

We also—as we work through this, I strongly believe we have to

look at more family approaches.

It’s also very interesting to see where you can have things that

will apply in the other States where you have things that are

unique to Hawaii. We need to always respect that from the Federal

Government. We try to push things as much as possible down to

the State side, you made a good point pushing it to the local community, with minimal pass-through, minimal control should be, obviously, the goal.

When I got elected, I came from a little town of 700 outside of

Ft. Wayne. My theme was more Grable, less Washington, but I

didn’t mean to move it from Grable to Indianapolis either any more

than you want to move it to Honolulu. The point should be that

you agree to move it down with the monitoring.

When you’re spending other peoples’ tax dollars from other

States, there are going to be more strings, there is going to be more

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taken out as it moves down in monitoring, it’s not just a pure block

grant. He who pays the piper picks the tune is the old expression

and that will be there. Nevertheless, we want to maximize the dollars on the ground.

I very much appreciate the seeming progress that you’re making

in a community-wide thing, but it’s very important that we also

make the end roads on marijuana and the other drugs as you’re

doing this or it will be self defeating. We don’t want a Cheech &

Chong or a modern day Ozzie Osbourne family situation.

This committee almost had a very unique hearing.

I say almost because the window was such that I couldn’t get in

in time, but we actually talked to Ozzie Osbourne and he was going

to come to our hearing with his full family before a couple more

of them went into drug rehab, Sharon with her own album and all

this kind of stuff. But he is one of the most eloquent, in between

his ineloquent periods, which are pretty frequent, of saying, look,

I got messed up and have blown out part of my brain, I’ve only

blown out part of the brain of my kids because of my behavior.

Unless we kind of understand this is interrelated together, which

is the other thing that’s been real challenging because the plantation mentality—or the changing limited opportunities in some of

the areas of this island isn’t that much different than we feel in

the rust belt where you can grow up and not even have to graduate

from high school, get a steel making job of $55,000, now all of a

sudden that’s in China. If it’s not in Mexico, it’s in China.

And the question is now they’re working two jobs, have similar

kinds of pressures that even the middle and upper classes aren’t

certainly aware of their next job or how stable that’s going to be,

it just adds uncertainty. And if you’re a temperament that thrives

on that, that’s fine. But if you’re a temperament that likes security,

it’s a whole different challenge here.

But one of the great things about America, and David Brooks has

a new book about this, is that we have outlets beyond just the job

in which to identify themselves which is why we don’t have some

of the class warfare that you have in other nations. It may be

you’re the greatest ukulele player in a band in Hilo. It may be that

you’re the bowling champion on a given island or you’ve written an

article or I like to collect miniature lighthouses. I’ve been to lighthouses and I can pretty much up just about anybody for the number of lighthouses I’ve been to, and so I’m kind of a lighthouse expert.

And as you teach kids of how self-esteem can come to supplement other than just this daily routine of a job, it’s one of challenges and why the Boys and Girls Clubs have increasingly gotten

more dollars in the system and why we have to look at creative

ways to communicate that jobs are important, I’m the workaholic,

this job, other than when you’re being attacked which is often, is

a great job, but I’ve also had all kinds of other jobs and so has my

family and you can’t get your total satisfaction out of your work

and that has to be something that you can communicate through

to.

Thanks, again, for your efforts. Thanks for this hearing. If you

have additional information that you want to come in—and tracking information is very helpful because the problem with meth and

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ice, in particular, you have more of a track record and have dealt

with the variations that when we talk to treatment people in other

parts of the United States, we don’t have anything. We’re dealing

with things that are 24 months max, some areas 6 months. It’s a

whole different ball game.

With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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Æ