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The Cold Hard Facts About Ice
-----------------------------
by: Robert Lopez
    Business Today, Fall 1989
-----------------------------

With its white sand beaches and pristine waters, Hawaii is one of the
premier outdoor pleasure spots of the world. But the Aloha state is
now the scene of a new type of pleasure, one far more menacing and
deadly: crystal methamphetamine.

Known on the streets of Honolulu as "ice"--because of its crystal-like
appearance and texture--this deadly, new drug is a highly refined type
of methamphetamine. This smokable form of speed only recently appeared
here from Southeast Asia, yet it has already replaced cocaine as the
illicit drug of choice in the Hawaiian islands.

Like crack cocaine, ice is smoked in a glass pipe and provides the
same type of additive, euphoric rush that shooting up gives
intravenous drug users-- only without the needle. But unlike the peak,
fifteen-minute high that crack provides, a single hit of ice creates a
high that lasts for hours, and several hits can wire an abuser for
days.

Authorities in Honolulu report that ice abuse has reached epidemic
proportions creating a flood of strung out junkies who have swamped
hospitals and treatment facilities throughout Oahu. "For us, it's the
latest crisis drug," says Hawaii's U.S. District Attorney Dan Bent.
"It's now Hawaii's crack epidemic."

Drug experts here warn that it is only a matter of time before
ice--which is beginning to appear in the San Fransisco Bay area --
grips the mainland drug population. "We got hit first because we were
in harm's way," says Major Mike Carvalho commander of the
narcotics/vice division of the Honolulu Police Department. "It's
eventually going to hit the mainland. The markets are there."

Long a favorite of smokers in the drug dens of Southeast Asia, ice
first appeared in Honolulu two years ago. "It's been in Asia for
years, but right around 1987 we began to see it here," Carvalho said.
"We realized immediately that we had a problem," added the
twenty-three year old police vetern. "So we started our Crystal Ball
Task Force." The task force was the first effort by police anywhere to
fight what may become the drug epidemic of the 1990's.

Carvalho says the drug is believed to be introduced to Hawaii by
Fillipino immigrants. But he added that ice, also known on the streets
as "batu" -- which means rock in the Philippine dialect Ilocano--is
not confined to any particular social or ethnic group. "What we've
been finding is that it's being used by everybody, even school kids,"
he said.

The drug's popularity is due to several factors. Because ice is
odorless it can be smoked anywhere. When heated inside the pipe, the
crystals turn into a pool of liquid, producing lethal vapors that are
absorbed into the bloodstream by the lungs. When the drug cools it
turns back into a solid, making it easy to transport.

Also, because ice represents the latest in so-called designer drugs,
it has developed somewhat of a nouveau cachet among drug users. Many
who start off with the intention of smoking the drug just once fall
prey to its additive effects.

Another reason for the drug's appeal is that it is falsely billed as a
safe alternative to crack cocaine. "What's happening here is that it
is being marketed as a safe form of crack," Hawaii's Bent says. "The
more information that comes out on how bad crack is, the more people
say how safe this is."  The reality, however, is that ice is far
deadlier than crack ever will be.

"We have the impression that the toxicity is much higher," says Dr.
Alex Stalcup, a drug expert and director of the Haight-Ashbury Free
Clinic Detox Program in San Francisco. He says ice can cause toxic
psychosis, convulsions, brain damage, stroke, heart attack among other
ills--sometimes on the first use. "Don't try it one time. It's too
good. You'll never get it out of your mind," the physician warns.

Unfortunately, the pleasure of ice is matched only by its
destructiveness. A twenty-four year old ice addict in Honolulu recalls
smoking eight hits of the drug--about two-tenths of a gram--over a
sixteen hour period.

"I was up for five days," says Clyde, who spoke on the condition that
his full name not be used. "At first I was able to maintain. I cleaned
my place, fixed my bike." But after three days without sleep, his ice
experience became a psychotic nightmare. "I started to freak, I saw
shadows. I was scared to go outside [my apartment]," Clyde said.
"Every time I heard noise, I thought someone was coming for me."

During a typical week-long binge, Clyde says, he ends up "amped out"
on his hands and knees, peering through cracks in the living room
curtain to "watch out for the guys that are coming to get me."

Just two years ago, the 5 foot 8 inch Clyde played major college
baseball.  His then muscular, 180-pound frame has since withered to a
frail 135 pounds.

Honolulu health officials say such experiences are not uncommon among
the city's growing number of ice abusers. At the Alcohol and Addiction
Program at Castle Hospital, a substance abuse counselor says that
seventy-five to ninety percent of the center's patients suffer from
ice related difficulties. "It's unbelievable. These people come in
like virtual zombies, totally on the edge," said the counselor who
asked not to be identified.

Ice has also broken the traditional gender boundary and is popular
among women, removing a protective barricade between children and
drugs. The situation is so acute that the state is even seeing its
first "ice-babies"--infants born to the addicted mothers.
"Essentially," Bent said, "We have babies born without hope."

The drug commands a high price. Carvalho says a tenth of a gram
packaged as a "paper," sells for $50, and an ounce can bring as much
as $5200. Paper refers to the triangular packet in which the drug is
sold.

The drug can be manufactured for several hundred dollars per gram
making it a lucrative investment. The ability to rake in huge profits
has, in turn, spawned a thriving multimillion dollar international
trade which stretches thousands of miles from the back alleys of
Honolulu to the illicit laboratories of Southeast Asia. Most of the
ice consumed in Hawaii, according to U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) officials, is manufactured in Korea and the
Philippines and smuggled into the state from Taiwan.

The ice trade, steadily growing since August 1988, is controlled by a
sophisticated but ruthless "Vietnamese-Chinese syndicate," says
Special Agent Dick Kellar, head of the DEA task force at Hololulu
International Airport. Syndicate operatives, Kellar says, have teamed
with local dealers to form elaborate distribution rings. These machine
gun-toting ice merchants are every bit as deadly as their mainland
crack cocaine counterparts, authorities say.

In February, Crystal Ball Task Force officers and DEA agents cracked a
major distribution ring that was involved with six to seven million
worth of the drug in the past two years. In that case, a Vietnamese
man, Oanh "Robert" Nguyen, was sentenced April 25 in connection with a
shipment of four packages containing 6.6 pounds of ice. So far, joint
Task Force and DEA sting operations netted twenty-one dealers who were
involved in large-scale activity.

Honolulu police have also made 400 ice arrests and seized 1.9 million
in property and goods, $780,000 in cash, forty AK-47 and AR-15 assault
rifles, and a myriad of pistols and other weapons. But officials warn
that the worst is yet to come. Says Bent, "It's a nightmare here, and
this is just a glimpse of the drug's long term destructiveness."
<<<>>>





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