Use of Highly Addictive ‘Ice’ Growing in Hawaii : Drugs: This smokable form of methamphetamine that ravages the minds and bodies of users has spread rapidy because it offers an intense, prolonged high without the use of needles.

The drug first caught on about three years ago in Kalihi, a central Honolulu stronghold of Filipino youth gangs. Now, says Deryll Ambrocio, an eighth-grader at Kalakaua Intermediate School in Kalihi, even his classmates use it.

“You see them after school,” said the slender 13-year-old. “They only use crystal meth now. It’s the one everybody wants.”

Crack, the smokable form of cocaine, is yesterday’s headline here. Hawaii today is the front line for crystal methamphetamine, or “ice,” a potent smokable form of methamphetamine that originated in Asia.

“People in Hawaii are the guinea pigs for the spread of smokable crystal methamphetamine into the U.S.,” said U.S. Atty. Daniel Bent. “What’s happening here is just a sample of what’s to come.”

The highly addictive drug offers what has proved to be an irresistible combination: an intense, prolonged high without the use of needles. While it goes on to ravage the bodies and minds of users, its initial payoffs are so seductive that it has rapidly taken over in Honolulu.

“It’s the fastest growing illicit drug here,” said Dr. Joseph Giannasio, director of Castle Medical Center’s Alcoholism and Addictions Program, the leading treatment facility in the state. “It’s literally an epidemic. Because it is smoked, more people are willing to try it than if they had to inject it.”

Police here have been besieged by phone calls from their counterparts across the country, who hope to slow the spread of ice through the mainland United States by learning from Hawaii’s experience.

Ice is not a new drug, but simply a more powerful and insidious incarnation of speed, or methamphetamine, which has long plagued the West Coast. So far, the lab process for making ice is not widely known, even in Hawaii. But the drug’s sudden rise to popularity here suggests it could overtake both speed and crack, authorities said.

“It’s all over the place,” said Lt. Harry Auld, who heads undercover investigations for the Honolulu Police Department’s Narcotics/Vice Division. “Because of its qualities, it could replace crack on the mainland.”

It has spread from a small group of immigrants to much of Honolulu’s work force, drawing in construction workers to data processors across the island.

It gives users the same exhilarating feeling as crack, and it hooks them just as fast. But ice has an added attraction. While a crack high is over within half an hour, a crystal meth high lasts from four to 14 hours.

“That’s what people like about it,” said Dr. Ken Willinger, a psychologist at the State Health Department’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division. “They can go up and stay up.”

Working people, particularly those with tedious jobs, fall for it because, initially, they think it makes them work better. A powerful stimulant to the central nervous system, ice allows people to perform simple, repetitive tasks faster and without fatigue.

Steve Goodenow, who heads one of the state’s largest private investigative firms, said most of the blue-collar workplace problems it has handled in the last two years involve crystal meth.

Unlike conventional speed, a powder that is injected or snorted, ice comes in translucent crystals the size of rock candy that are smoked through a 6-inch glass pipe. Nearly 100% pure, it packs more punch than conventional powdered meth, which has impurities and often is cut with lactose.

Use soon becomes compulsive. Users go on binges of three to four days and then fall into an almost comatose state. They wake up lethargic and smoke again to get going. Before long, the drug takes over, inducing paranoia, hallucinations, severe weight loss and life-threatening heart and lung problems.

“It makes you crazy,” said 27-year-old Hernando Tan, a hotel worker and former user. “You just keep on smoking. You can’t eat. You have no taste for food. You go to bed and try to rest, but your mind keeps working.

“When the drug finally is out of you, you feel so totally fatigued, it’s like you died. It scares you when you wake up.”

Authorities trace the drug to illegal production labs in Korea, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, and speculate that immigrants brought it with them to Honolulu.

“Hawaii is one of the first ports from the Far East,” notes Lowrey Leong, resident agent in charge for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Honolulu. “You have lots of people migrating here. They may use it socially. The next thing you know, there’s a market for it.”

While no one knows how many people are using it, the number of arrests for use or possession of crystal meth has soared from 203 last year to 451 just through September of this year, according to the Honolulu Police Department. If that pace keeps up, it will be a threefold increase by the end of the year.

Treatment facilities and hospitals have witnessed the same trend. An isolated case of ice abuse was reported as early as 1974, but until two years ago, it accounted for almost none of the patient population. Nowadays, ice users account for up to 70% of those seeking help at some treatment centers, Willinger said.

“The effects are dramatic,” he said. “The time between initial use and cries for help tends to be a lot shorter than other drugs.”

George Lopes, 25, who gave up crack for ice and is now trying to get clean, calls ice “the worst drug you can try.” It cost him his girlfriend of seven years and his job at a newspaper print shop.

“It’s so addictive,” he said, shaking his head. “And it has a lot of side effects, worse than smoking crack. I was getting really violent. I used to hit her a lot.”

Paranoia haunted him as well. “I thought people were following me and talking behind my back,” said the wiry, soft-spoken young man. “I used to hide in my closet.”

Such psychiatric symptoms can persist six months after cessation of the drug, unlike cocaine-linked paranoia, which subsides in a few days, said Giannasio. “Users can also become extremely violent, which is not usually seen with cocaine,” he said.

Police have uncovered AK-47 assault rifles, M-2 carbines, sawed-off shotguns, Uzis and even grenades in their crystal meth busts.

“In all our arrests for cocaine and other drugs, we’ve never come across this type of arsenal,” said the DEA’s Leong.

Users, suffering from drug-induced paranoia, feel they need the guns because they can’t trust anybody. Dealers acquire the weapons to protect themselves and their huge profits.

The synthetic drug retails on the street in $50 packets of a few crystals weighing a tenth of a gram. Derrick Cho, a data processor and recovering user, said he was drawn to it “because of the money,” and began dealing before trying it himself. At that time he could buy 3.5 gams of ice for $500.

For producers, the profit margin is even fatter.

“A lot of people are promoting this drug because there is a tremendous amount of money to be made,” Willinger noted. “For roughly $700 worth of chemicals and equipment, you can produce one pound, worth $30,000.”

While police have confiscated ephedrine, a chemical precursor to ice, and a second-stage processing kitchen, they have yet to find a lab here. But they figure it is only a matter of time. In California, where more than 400 illegal methamphetamine labs are seized every year, authorities are concerned.

“Ice has not hit here yet,” said Dan Largent, clandestine lab coordinator for the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement of the California Department of Justice. “Apparently the process which produces the large, translucent crystal is a little different from the normal, clandestine speed.”

Police and DEA chemists have tried to replicate ice, so far without success, he said. It’s unlikely they are alone in their efforts.

“What goes on in Colombia is irrelevant,” noted Willinger, who expects illicit U.S. producers to discover the formula. “We could stop everything else from coming in but not stop this from being made.”