Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 3, 1 April 2009 — Nature of drug addiction [ARTICLE]

Nature of drug addiction

While it has been estimated that 80 percent of our state's inmate populahon

has substance-abuse issues and that many of these men and women are simple nonviolent dmg-possession offenders, our state Legislature considers a bill that provides for a common-sense study by the Attorney General's office to determine if it would be beneficial to send minor dmg-possession offenders to treatment, pre- and post-criminal charging. The results of this common-sense study would be due by the 2010 legislative session. Obviously the framers of this bill fail to see the forest for the trees; a more timely response to our state's epidemie of substance abuse and prison overcrowding is sorely needed now ! One factor that needs to be addressed in order to provide for public safety is the difference between a dangerous career criminal who is a dmg abuser and a nonviolent simple possessionoffending addict who is a criminal simply because he or she is a drug user. In order for there to be some fiseal relief for the state and timely costeffective treatment for the addict, we must first return sentencing authority to the courts. The biggest hindrance to this in regards to the nonviolent simple dmg-possession offending addict is our state's two strikes in a five-year period repeat offender statute and its mandatory jail time. Five years is the mandatory sentence and three years is the parole board's noim. This prosecutorial trump card denies dmg court, mental heahh court, HOPE - or Hawai'i's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement - and all probation-based residential substance abuse treatment programs. When you consider that all addicts suffer an overwhelming compulsion to "repeat" an act or the use of a harmful substance regardless of the consequences, it is a common-sense eonelusion that addicts are "repeat offenders" by the nature of their illness and not by criminal intent. Miehael Spiker Honolulu, O'ahu