[ OUR OPINION ]
Enact task force’s plan
to heighten ‘ice’ attackMORE than 400 participants of a three-day drug summit on substance abuse in September called for an increased effort to combat the growing use of crystal methamphetamine in Hawaii. A joint House and Senate task force has reached a similar conclusion that meth addiction be treated as a disease and public health problem requiring a much larger commitment by the state. The Legislature should respond with adequate funding of this critical undertaking.
THE ISSUE
A state legislative task force has proposed that programs aimed at fighting crystal meth be increased by $21.6 million.
The state has been spending about $13.5 million on drug treatment programs, and the task force recommends that an additional $21.6 million be devoted to fighting crystal meth, or "ice." Nearly half would be spent on treatment of adults addicted to the drug.
Use of crystal meth in the state rose during the 1990s to a peak in 1997, declined for two years and began rising again two years ago, according to the task force. From 1998 to 2002, admissions into treatment programs increased by 80 percent. The task force accurately describes the problem as an epidemic, afflicting more than 6,000 residents in need of treatment.
As the Star-Bulletin reported in a week-long series of articles before the drug summit, surveys have indicated that crystal meth use by high school students in the state has declined during the past decade and a half. Drug education programs in high schools seem to have been effective. The task force recommends that an additional $4.5 million be spent on school-based treatment programs and their expansion to middle schools. Since the school drug education programs don't reach high school dropouts, it proposes that substance abuse prevention programs within and outside schools be increased by $3.6 million.
It also calls for clarification of a law that was intended to allow state judges to sentence first-time drug offenders to treatment instead of incarceration. The state Supreme Court recently upheld a judge's sentence of a first-time drug offender to prison, despite the law.
The task force says the expenditures could be offset by savings created by the expanded treatment. For example, it estimates that the state Drug Court's diverting of half of the nearly 1,600 drug offenders to treatment programs instead of prison would save $47 million, because incarceration of an inmate costs $30,000 a year. Also, providing treatment to an estimated 1,500 ice-addicted mothers who might otherwise lose their children would save $22 million, or $14,740 per child in welfare services. Welfare and law-enforcement officials might quarrel with that assertion.
Still, the task force recommends that legislators consider a variety of sources to pay for the war on ice, including federal funding such as a voucher program and block grants provided by the Department of Human Services' Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the state's "rainy day" fund created by tobacco settlement money. It also recommends that the Legislature consider increasing the state's general excise tax or other state or county taxes, but that option should be avoided.
