$1.5M in federal funds
to help Kauai fight ‘ice’

LIHUE » U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye took a short trip to Kauai yesterday to raise money for schools, meet with children and Kauai Mayor Bryan Baptiste, and to present some federal funding for anti-drug programs.

Inouye announced that in next year's federal budget, nearly $1.5 million will go toward battling Kauai's mounting methamphetamine addiction epidemic with funding acting as both the carrot and the stick.

Federal funding last year allowed the Kauai Police Department and the Kauai Prosecuting Attorney to form an Ice Task Force, charged with stopping the flow of ice to the Garden Island. Inouye, D-Hawaii, pledged another $200,000 for equipment and training to KPD and an additional $75,000 for the prosecutor side.

The Ice Task Force, along with other members of KPD, has already seized more methamphetamine, nearly two pounds, in the first half of 2005 than KPD did in all of 2004.

But, Inouye said, "in doing our best to rid our community of drugs, it takes more than the Police Department."

Inouye, Baptiste and Kauai Anti-Drug Planning Coordinator Roy Nishida announced a $400,000 "scholarship program," as Nishida put it, to fund off-island drug treatment.

Since Kauai does not have its own inpatient treatment, the $400,000 will go to the Hina Mauka residential centers to fund Kauai residents' stay at their facilities.

The county will also receive nearly $300,000 to distribute to its anti-drug programs through the Offices of Community Assistance, the Kauai Planning and Action Alliance and the Mayor's Office. Another $400,000 will go to prevention activities on Kauai, according to information provided by Nishida.

Inouye, the self-proclaimed "bagman," said the funding came at the request of Baptiste and Nishida, his "partners" in the war on ice.

"He always comes through," Baptiste said of Hawaii's senior senator. "Everything he does, he does with our children first."

Inouye, who attended a fund-raiser Thursday night to raise money for Kauai schools, was back on a plane to Washington by the afternoon, Nishida said.