Hawaii Has Huge Meth Mess

[dArKeR]

Hungry children sat quietly in a darkened living room, terrified of their abusive father. In the kitchen, maggots and rotting food filled the fridge. With the electricity out, cooking was done on a propane stove. The furniture was repossessed. The welfare check was already spent. The family was being evicted.

None of this mattered to Wayne and Dina Tamura.

As long as the couple from the tiny town of Kau was high on crystal methamphetamine, they were happy.

"I didn't think about the kids, I didn't want to spend money on diapers," said Wayne Tamura, now a recovering addict. "All I wanted to do was smoke."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/12/national/main573057.shtml

This is interesting and I wonder if some smart researchers can dig and find something. It's quite easy to get or grow yourself, Pakalolo. And good quality. Hawaii has a 2 crops a year too. So if you wanted to get high you could have Pakalolo instead of Meth. I never tried Meth so I'm not sure of the effects.

[KamaAina]

1. The ice epidemic started right when they cracked down on pakalolo

:smoke: in "Operation Green Harvest".

Coincidence? I think not.

Pakalolo is now so expensive on O'ahu, thanks to Green Harvest plus all the 9/11 air security that doesn't seem to be stopping the ice, that we actually had a bust of an indoor grower recently!

So now, instead of people smoking a locally grown agricultural product :-) we have money flowing OUT of our economy to pay for a DANGEROUS drug that causes people to, for example, bash in their ex's windshield in a mall parking lot, then hang themselves in their jail cell (this actually happened, to Mackey Feary, who had been a popular local musician back in the day).

Thanks a lot, Green Harvest! And thanks, too, for all the poison you've sprayed all over our forest reserves, for the helicopters flying right over people's homes, and more! </sarcasm>

Oh, and Ka'u (not "Kau") is a district of the Big Island, not a town, so there.

[FireHeart]

16. Most of the folks I knew way back when...

smoked a bowlfull of Kaui or Maui, popped some popcorn and settled down in front of the TV to watch "Toyama No Kinsan". :)

Crystal, Smack, Coke...almost unknown.

Until Operation Green Harvest.

This was a long, long time ago. Decades.

Now they are rotting on those filthy cooked drugs. :(

[opihimoimoi]

2. The Police Force came down hard on dope growers, killed the "industry"

Only to be suprised by the growth of the Meth drug......

Unforeseen consequences apply here.

Thank you Mrs Reagan who sicced Carlton Turner on us to spray paraquat on the patches. That bitch improvished Hawaii who is still not fully recovered.

Fuck that ole bitch and her Just say NO shit.

[GregW]

10. My daughter just started high school in Oahu

Claims they have a big meth problem there.

;(

[twilight]

11. don't worry she's paying for it

she looks at ol ronnie boy laying there all day long and wonder why ...

[zelda7743]

3. Boy, do we

I work in a hospital on an outer island. We have a steady flow of people coming in for meth-related stuff. We end up sending them back out on the street. There are few treatment options, as the government would have to pay for it. It's so much more cost-effective to throw them in jail (and have to ship them to the mainland because our jails are full).
Grrr.

Edit for spelling.

[Must_B_Free]

4. This is a fake epidemic.

The numbers are falsified.

They multiplied the actual "ice" numbers by 4 so they could get the funding for this facist "war on drugs".

[Abe Linkman]

14. Correcto - the "war on drugs" is much like the 9-11 attacks

Both are driven totally by corrupt reasons - financially and politically.

We need a War on Greed, a War on Shopperholics, a War on Fast Food addicts, a War on Ignorance, a War on Intolerance, a War on fascism, a War on the military industrial complex, a War on War Mongers, a War on Neglected Americans, a War on the Prison industrial complex, a War on Privatization of commodities essential to life itself. A War on Election theives, a War on Peace haters.

[karlschneider]

5. I can't comment on Hawaii, but here in Oklahoma it is regularly said on TV

that "we" have the "worst" meth "problem" of any state. I won't doubt that might be true, it really is somewhat epidemic. MY (sorry for the caps) take is that people, around here anyway, are despondent. They supported Dubya 3 years ago and things have only gotten worse, so their
circumstances have deteriorated. It seems that many of these poor dopes have decided it's less painful to smoke crystal meth than to face up to their own misguided support back then, not to mention that Tulsa just up the road has lost 18000 jobs in the last 18 months.

And so there is a micro-economy - people with a recipe make this shit, and the few people with a few spare dollars (or not so spare) buy some and get fucked up every day.

The guy who lives across the back street here went basically nuts last Saturday after, I am totally convinced smoking some of this shit...ran up the road and stripped off all his clothes. Made it to the convenience store/bait shop where a sheriff deputy just happened to be putting gas in her car. She managed to snag this guy and get him wrapped up in a blanket...a couple minutes later a male deputy showed up and began transporting him to the pokey.
He tried several times to jump out of the police car.

We see a lot of this kind of crazy shit out here at the lakeside community.
:-(

[veganwitch]

7. meth is bad in the quad cities area

along the mississippi river in illinois and iowa. granted the hardest drug ive done is weed but any sorta speed-esque drug is not for me.

give me mellow highs thank you very much.

[laylah]

17. I relocated to QC area

last July and have noticed the extravagant numbers (compared to colorado) of meth busts.....weren't two teachers, or a teacher and principal in a school not far from QC, indicted on just that about a year ago? I have never done meth, nor would I care to, but from what I have read it is one nasty killer.

[Nevernose]

9. It ain't Dubya's problem

It's only now spreading big-time to places like Oklahoma. It began hitting the West Coast about 12 years ago and is now like a runaway freight train.

[mrbill]

18. meth is also a real problem in north central texas.

In my little county about 80% of the indictments by the district court grand jury are for meth related incidents; manufacture, possession with intent, possession of anyhdrous ammonia in a non-approved container, etc.

Long gone are the days of a need for complicated labs and a knowledge of chemistry. Now any moron with a death wish can go get engine starter fluid, drain cleaner, cold pills, some coffee filters and tupperware and they are almost in business. $200 worth of materials easily available at the supercenter can be turned into $4000 in a few hours in the kitchen, garage, back of a moving pickup or the woods. The local deputies call it "nazi speed".

The anhydrous ammonia is the tricky part. This is where most of the morons screw up.

Lots of farmers in this area - they use anhydrous for fertilizer and have huge 500-2000 tanks. Folks come up from the big city and break the valves on the tanks to get a gallon or so while the other 499-1999 gallons leaks into the atmosphere.

The local deputies got wise and set up some motion detectors and night-light video cameras. They have made a dent in the problem.

[SideshowScott]

6. funny hows theres always a drug problem when theres a Republican in office

I do know that drug addiction does not know party lines but it always seems like we have a big time problem with them when there is a republican in office from coke during the reagan years to the HORRIBLE crack problem during the 90's..Now i fear that with the huge number of unemloyed that many will be turning to drugs..This may be just a slice of more to come

[Nevernose]

8. Meth is (or will be) the worst drug problem

anyone's seen yet. It'll be like heroin and crack rolled together (no pun intended with "rolled"). The shit destroys families, destroys brains, and destroys lives, and is more addictive and seductive than anything else I've ever seen.

The meth problem in this country is like a time-bomb.

[Laughing Mirror]

12. This is the infamous "Tina" seems to be about as popular with gay men

as with men in jail in Honolulu

{snip}

Crystal — a stimulant that produces reactions ranging from hyperactivity to euphoria — has become an epidemic among gays in New York. "Four years ago, 10 percent of our clients had a problem with it," says Paul McCabe, program director of the Pride Institute, which provides substance-abuse and mental-health treatment to the gay and lesbian community. "Now we're up to 40 to 50 percent. And it's 70 percent for our clients under 30." Marc Berkley, party promoter and head of gay weekly HX, says it never used to be that way: "A few years ago, you wouldn't see crystal. We had a joke about it: 'The queens in L.A. do crystal because they're three hours behind and want to catch up with New York.' "

Crystal ball:
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/articles/02/gay/crystalball/index.htm

Tina is not a nice girl:
http://www.centerone.org/articles/tinanotnicegirl.htm

[loudnclear]

13. What is Pakalolo?

Never heard of it.

[dArKeR]

15. Marijuana