01:00 AM EST on Sunday, January 22, 2006

Bend your knees, Eastern Seaboard, you are probably in for a nasty new drug epidemic.

So warns Peter Carlisle, the prosecuting attorney of the city and county of Honolulu, Hawaii, which in the last few years has been swamped with the newest form of methamphetamine, known as "ice."

If you thought crack cocaine was bad, ice is cheaper, easier to make from household items, more potent and more dangerous -- both to the user and to those living around the labs where explosions are all too common.

Speaking at a recent juvenile justice conference, Carlisle said: "For 25 years, I've told everyone the most dangerous drug is the legal one: alcohol. In recent years, ice has replaced alcohol as the most common substance-abuse cause of death."

Meth -- often called "speed" -- has been used since the 1800s to stave off hunger, fatigue and fear. In the 1960s, motorcycle gangs and truck drivers used a form of meth they called "crank" because they stashed it in their bikes' crank cases.

Crank, like cocaine, was a powder that could be snorted or injected. Ice, like crack cocaine, is a crystalized form that can be smoked for an immediate, huge rush. The ice rush lasts from between 2 to 16 hours. Surely you remember what crack cocaine did to our social statistics for a while. It was not pretty.

According to Carlisle, ice was first developed in the Philippines and moved from there through Asia. "Which meant that Hawaii was in harm's way. Then it spread through California and from there it has been moving through the country. It is raging in Tennessee right now."

Since pseudoephedrine is a key ingredient, your pharmacy has replaced any cold medicines with nasal decongestants with a slip of paper you must to take to the register. The real thing is too easy to steal. Pseudoephedrine is the only ingredient law enforcement has any hope of controlling, since the rest come from such common items as anti-freeze, lantern fuel, paint thinner, drain cleaner and table salt, among others.

Ice is manufactured either in "super labs" which turn out serious volume -- $100 of ingredients yields $1,300 on the streets -- or in "mom and pop" labs. The little labs, with entirely amateur chemists, are the ones mostly likely to explode or produce toxic gases.

Carlisle had truly gross photographs, including one of two naked dead people who allowed the stuff they were cooking to become toxic while they got lost in the drug's intense and long-lasting sex that is the signature of this drug.

The crash from the high, called "tweaking," is particularly ugly, provoking intense depression, paranoia and volatile emotions. The user's hyped-up fearlessness triggers a high rate of gun deaths because of the impulsiveness on the part of both the bad guys and the cops who get especially anxious for their own lives when ice is involved.

Tiffani Limahai, crowned Miss Hawaii in 1998, tells her sad story as a condition of her own drug rehabilitation.

She says, "I'd heard people say that ice was powerful and that just one hit would get you hooked, but I didn't believe them. I thought it was a matter of will power; and I didn't think anything could get in the way of my will power. Of course, I'd also heard the horror stories -- people losing their homes, their families, their jobs, their teeth, etc. But no one (I knew) who used ice was like that. I had convinced myself that I could dabble in ice, just to help me lose a little weight, stay up, work longer, or do whatever it was that I needed to get done. It didn't take long before my social group got smaller and more centered on those who were also using drugs. I broke up with my boyfriend so I didn't have to feel guilty about my little habit.'

Eventually she lost her son, her business, her home and her family relationships. Finally, in September 2004 she was arrested for possession and her fame as Miss Hawaii turned into a nightmare of public humiliation.

According to the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland, 75 and 76 percent of the police in the Northwest and Southwest, respectively, report that methamphetamine is the biggest problem in their county. By contrast, only 4 percent of the Northeast's law enforcement so complains.

Carlisle assures us that it's coming, though. In November, the cops investigating the death of a well-known Boston artist found that he'd died of the stuff, and to boot, he had a lab in his house. The neighbors had to be evacuated so the hazardous substances crew could dismantled the volatile lab. Many more such labs are expected.

Carlisle's solution for the coming crisis is universal drug-testing, starting at the top with law enforcement and public officials taking the lead and being models of compliance.

Yeah, that'll be popular.

My solution, as always, is for families and schools to get much tighter with their kids, because knowing them well, listening carefully and being absolutely clear and sincere about caring for them is the best anti-drug in the world. Schools that do not yet have advisory programs, whereby every adult has 12 to 15 kids whom they shepherd through their school experience, are not doing themselves any favor. If you know the kids well, you can know early on that drugs have hit a school and you can do something about it.

In any case, Carlisle laments that we put all our money and resources into the care and cleanup required by chronic offenders. We'd 'd be much better off working on genuine prevention. Amen to that. Sadly, prevention is always a harder sell than more get-tough laws, more prisons and more generally being mean to those people whose lives were already so out of control that they got involved with drugs in the first place.

Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.