Politics keep
program treating
meth on ice

The war on the drug has
turned into a battle between
Lingle and the Legislature

Ku'uipo Carroll-Vierra remembers sitting with her estranged mother shortly after giving birth to her first child and smoking crystal methamphetamine, or "ice," for the first time.

She was only 14.

Carroll-Vierra, who spent most of her childhood in foster homes, said she was hooked from her first pipe. She dropped out of the ninth grade, sometimes sold drugs, lived in Ala Moana Park and stole or took food from church groups to survive. By 20 she had given birth to four children and lost them all to foster homes and adoption.

STAR-BULLETIN / SEPTEMBER 2004 Ku'uipo Carroll-Vierra says that after she went through a drug addiction treatment program at the Salvation Army, she realized that her 4-month-old daughter, Geordine-'Li Stanley-Carroll-Vierra, was "my life."

Today, Carroll-Vierra, who did prison time, is clean and working hard to be a good mother to her fifth child. Her 7-month-old daughter lives with her at Women's Way, a Salvation Army residential treatment center for women and their children.

With their help, she is learning life skills and how to care for her baby, and staying off drugs. But the young woman said she and many like her cannot get the treatment to change their lives without public money.

But that money has been slow in coming.

Every day, treatment providers say they collectively turn away 150 to 250 adults seeking help. Numbers for adolescents are unknown. Former addicts like Carroll-Vierra know that each funded bed treats more than one person. It helps heal a family.

MORE THAN 18 months after declaring war on ice, the Lingle administration has not presented its plan to attack what it calls an "ice epidemic" and a "priority." And many critics say the Republican administration, by delaying the release of funding for adolescent and adult treatment programs until late 2004, hampered "Act 40," the drug solution package passed last session by the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Repeatedly in news statements, the administration defended the delays, saying they needed time to assure taxpayer money was not wasted. Lt. Gov. James Aiona, who held a drug summit for three days in September 2003, later said he needed time to study the issue, which delayed the administration's drug plan.

From the 1990s until 2004, ice addiction escalated statewide, but public funding for treatment stayed mostly the same, according to Elaine Wilson, the recently retired head of the state Health Department's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division.

"Act 40 was the first huge increase in funds in 14 years," Wilson said, "and it came at a time when the treatment need was growing and more people accepted the idea that people really do need treatment."

But, "if we are really committed to doing something about the substance abuse problem, then we need to commit resources," she said. "It can't just be talk and plans. It has to be actual money and resources."

DURING THE 2004 session, the Legislature and the administration launched separate offenses on the ice problem, calling it an epidemic, a crisis and a priority. But the separate efforts escalated into competition, observers said.

As the 2005 session nears opening, the competition appears to be on again. Tomorrow, the Legislature will hold public hearings on the funding and impacts of Act 40. Aiona's office scheduled a news conference the same day to announce the administration's long-awaited drug plan.

Drug treatment providers are worried. Many have just received funds from the Lingle administration that the Legislature appropriated in April. This money does not expand their programs; it helps maintain the ones they already have in place.

Oftentimes, providers say they physically have some beds but not the money to fund the treatment. The Act 40 money funded those beds.

"Our waiting lists continue to grow," said Alan Johnson, managing director of Hina Mauka, one of the state's largest providers doing residential and outpatient treatment. "When we have a bed, we make one phone call, and 100 or more people crawl out of the woodwork wanting it."

Said Claire Woods, executive director of Women's Way and chairwoman of the Hawaii Substance Abuse Coalition: "I agree there needs to be a systematic plan, but it's hard for me to say no to people who ask for help. We're not asking for more to build new programs; we are asking to sustain the money we have to fill up the (unfunded) capacity we already have."

Providers like Woods and Johnson have reviewed Lingle's proposed biennium budget and found the funding they won in Act 40 is mostly not there.

"I guess it was a one-time shot," Woods said.

LINGLE SPOKESMAN Russell Pang said the Act 40 money "was a one-time appropriation and allocation. The law was passed and $14.7 million was appropriated and $14.1 million was released.

"But the lieutenant governor will discuss his proposals (tomorrow)," Pang said. "We have a drug control and substance abuse initiative that we will submit to the Legislature this session."

According to Wilson, the $4 million for adult treatment appropriated under Act 40 in the last budget is not in Lingle's current proposed budget. Of the $3 million Act 40 allocated to adolescent treatment, only about $1 million appears in the proposed budget, with $730,000 allotted for adolescent residential treatment and $360,000 for adolescent school-based treatment.

"The governor's proposed budget offers a pittance for treatment," said Sen. Rosalyn Baker (D, Kapalua-Kaanapali-Lahaina-Maalaea-Kihei-Makena), chairwoman of the Senate Health Committee. "Providers are very concerned, but they don't want to say anything publicly because the administration, rather than the Health Department, has been reviewing which programs get funding," she said. "They don't want to say anything publicly and get their programs blacklisted."

IN 2004 the Legislature appropriated $14.7 million for its three-pronged battle plan: prevention, treatment and law enforcement. The Lingle administration offered no legislative package and said it wanted to study the issue. Lingle did not sign the bill, which became law on April 30.

The Lingle administration took until last fall, more than seven months after the Legislature had voted, to release the $7.3 million of the Act 40 money that included funds to treat people like Carroll-Vierra, who have children or are pregnant.

"It's politics," said Sen. Colleen Hanabusa (D, Waianae-Nanakuli-Lualualei-Makaha), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. "They didn't invent it, so they don't want to fund it."

Carroll-Vierra waited more than nine months to get into Women's Way.

"I think the government should put money into treatment," she said. "There's lots of people on drugs. My hometown, Waianae, is 'Ice Palace.' It's like a ghost town, so many people on drugs.

"What I see is that if people don't get treatment, they end up homeless. They go to prison. The prisons are over-full. They have no life and no hope. They are on drugs or they are dead and dying."

HER VIEWS are shared by the Joint House-Senate Task Force on Ice and Drug Abatement, convened before the 2004 session. The task force recommended $10.7 million for adult treatment, saying that "curing the present generation of ice addicts will reduce future costs for public services in health care, child care and child welfare services."

In its report the task force said 3,162 pregnant and parenting women needed treatment. At an average cost of $3,400 per admission, it estimated that $10.7 million was needed.

The task force said successful treatment of half the women would save the state $47 million in prison costs. It based that estimate on 1,581 people being imprisoned for one year at a cost of $30,000 each.

The report said that when a child is removed from a home, it costs the state $14,740 per child a year. If 1,500 women were treated so they could care for their own children, the state could save an estimated $22 million a year.

"I can't believe there was such an outcry over the ice problem, and we are far from winning the battle, but the administration is giving us this sense that it (treatment) doesn't need to be funded," Hanabusa said.

Carroll-Vierra said she does not understand politics, but what she does know is that "this program opened my eyes to how drugs bring you down. Before, I looked at people on drugs as normal. If I hadn't had this program, I would've maxed out my prison term to 2007 and still not had anything to live for.

"I would've gone back to the street and smoking dope and lost my daughter," she said. "But now I understand, my daughter is my life."