Ice victims need help, not incarceration

I can't remember the last time I thanked the Legislature for something. But they actually put our money where our mouths are by putting more money into treatment for ice victims rather than throwing the available money down the black hole of the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" approach (Star-Bulletin, May 1).

The "more interdiction" approach just makes lifetime criminals out of our kids instead of letting them get help when they decide to put their lives back together.

There's a story of a boy brought by his father to former Kauai Police Chief George Freitas' office asking for treatment. Freitas tried all afternoon to find a place for the boy, to no avail. He had to send him and his father home and there wasn't a good outcome to the story.

Do you think it's easy for ice addicts to ask for help? It happens on rare occasions, but that is the time to catch them, not when they've been tossed in jail and have to go through withdrawal with lawyers and courts at their throats.

Which system do you think facilitates reclamation of our neighbors and families: voluntary and motivated or incarcerated and pissed off?

We still have a long way to go in providing treatment on demand but we all know that it is better to allow someone who says "today is the day, I'm ready" to get clean than to do it after they've been arrested.

Andy Parx
Lawai, Kauai

Stop chasing pot users, go after ice instead

Regarding the editorial "Let patients grow their own pakalolo" (Star-Bulletin, April 23): The Drug Enforcement Agency has been raiding medical marijuana patients' and caregivers' homes in the name of the drug war for a long time now. It's time for this police-state mentality to stop. Former Gov. Ben Cayetano took the initiative to make medical marijuana legal in Hawaii. Now it's time to take it one step further.

Experts on the subject of marijuana, such as Lester Grinspoon of Harvard and Mitch Erlywine of the University of Southern California, agree that it is not physically addictive and does not cause outbursts of rage or violence. Keeping it illegal has caused its price to skyrocket.

Ice, on the other hand, is cheap to make and cheap to buy. It destroys lives, as we in Hawaii are becoming far too familiar with. Instead of spending money hunting down people who grow pot, the government should use that money to get truly dangerous drugs like ice off the streets.

Besides that, it makes absolutely no sense that an 18-year-old kid can walk into any store and purchase tobacco products, which kill people every day, and anyone 21 or older can purchase enough alcohol to get an elephant drunk, despite concerns about domestic abuse, drunken driving and health problems. Yet a plant that has 10,000 years of use behind it is illegal.

It's time to do the logical thing in Hawaii and decriminalize marijuana, as 12 other states have done.

Dillon Naber
Wahiawa

Bickering gets in way of school reform

If lawmakers were required to send their own children to the public school system, we would have an excellent system without delay. Our state lawmakers have been promising a quality public school system for more than 20 years and still haven't delivered.

The expensive and highly regarded Business Round Table Study by a national school reform expert, Paul Berman, said it in 1988 and again in 2004: Hawaii must have a quality public school system.

With a quality public school and early education system, Hawaii will not only attract companies that pay salaries needed to prosper here but also help our most valuable assets (our children) achieve success in the competitive international marketplace. If you are concerned about Hawaii's future, write Governor Lingle and your state legislators to stop bickering and make due the 20-year promise of a quality public school system for all of Hawaii's children.

Ted West
Honolulu

Unfortunately, ethics does need to be taught

Regarding your editorial "Officials shouldn't need to be told what's ethical" (Star-Bulletin, May 8): With all due respect, I strongly disagree! I say this with more than 20 years of military experience and another 20 years of state and federal civil service.

When I retired from the military, I pursued an MBA at Chaminade University and worked as a graduate assistant. I became aware of the lack of honesty and integrity in some of those in the program, which consisted mainly of adults already pursuing active careers in business, government and the military. This lack of ethical training and background was so evident that Chaminade initiated a course in ethics as part of the MBA program.

Subsequent to receiving my MBA, I entered the Department of Defense's Contracting Intern program and spent two years taking a variety of courses, every one of which emphasized the need for ethics and morality in the handling of government funds. While I was at the Pentagon, every contracting officer and specialist was required to attend annual refresher training sessions on ethics conducted by military and civilian lawyers.

While people in high office should not need Ethics 101, it is obvious from the behavior of some City Council members, representatives of the mayor's campaigns, state senators and representatives and even the governor's staff that it would not be amiss. No one is above the law, and they all need to be reminded of same!

T.J. Davies Jr.
Captain, U.S. Air Force (retired)
Department of Defense GS-13 (retired)
Kapolei

Saddam's brutality is a separate issue

Regarding "U.S. treatment of prisoners doesn't compare to Saddam's brutal record" by syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, published in the Star-Bulletin May 6:

To Cal Thomas: "That was then and there; this is now and here!"

Also, it is common sense and common knowledge that "two wrongs don't make a right."

Tetsuji Ono
Hilo, Hawaii

Isn't soldier's life worth a little 'humiliation'?

What if Gallup polled this question: If gathering intelligence could save your son or daughter, would you agree with interrogating a terrorist by threatening humiliation?

Leighton Loo
Mililani

Pictures don't prove soldiers did anything

I am shocked that the media assumes our soldiers are committing acts of violence on the prisoners of war. Just because there are these pictures showing violent actions doesn't make it all true. There were similar acts of violence during the Korean war, that was the intelligence troops forcing the enemy to talk. Military intelligence, what a contradiction of terms. These people would use any and all types of torture to make prisoners talk, and if that didn't work there was a very dead prisoner.

The average G.I. Joe is not the kind of person to torture prisoners. Most of them are kind hearted and are apt to show compassion to another human in trouble.

Curtis R. Rodrigues
Kaneohe

Israel trip will draw al-Qaida to Hawaii

In lieu of recent events, when a U.S. governor is feted an Israeli state visit with administration members in tow, it's a political bombshell ("Lingle seeks unique view on trip to Israel," Star-Bulletin, May 11). No sooner did Governor Lingle recently visit President Bush at his Texas ranch, did he tear up the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, giving Prime Minister Ariel Sharon carte-blanche acceptance to his racist West Bank acquisitions.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 states that "land cannot be acquired by war." The West Bank and Gaza were stolen from the Palestinians in the 1967 "Six Day's War."

Like Bush, Sharon is an unrepentant war criminal, with a lengthy, dirty laundry list of human rights atrocities, including:

>> the Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982, resulting in over 4000 civilian Palestinian's, dead.

The official 1993 Israeli report said he, Sharon, was "personally responsible" for it.

>> The Jenin and Nablus massacres of 2002, resulting in untold thousands of civilian Palestinian deaths.

Of Israel, Lingle says theirs is "an economy much like our own ... (with) military, agriculture and tourism."

Well, she's got two correct. I don't see snowbirds flocking to Honolulu in the near future, now that we've joined Tel Aviv as one of al-Qaida's prime targets.

David Williams
Kealakekua, Hawaii