Four decades after smokable methamphetamine, aka Ice, made its U.S. landfall in Hawaii, the consequences are still devastating. In 2024, 275 people in Hawaii died from meth toxicity, more than twice as many as seven years earlier. Meth is a factor in nearly half of confirmed child abuse cases in the state. A third of admissions to Hawaii State Hospital in the past year involved patients with a history of meth use. It has been called the biggest single driver of the state’s homelessness crisis. Mark Baker, an emergency physician who has watched meth ravage his Oahu ER for decades, put it plainly at his 2026 EndMeth conference: “We were the guinea pigs here. And it hasn’t stopped.” View this post on Instagram A deep dive published this week by Honolulu Civil Beat traces how Hawaii became the guinea pig, and the story hits close to home for the North Shore.…