Preliminary results from an investigation of the helicon instability in a plasma composed of protons, electrons and singly charged oxygen ions, are presented. The velocity distribution function for each plasma component is modeled by a bi-Lorentzian distribution, which allows each particle species to possess a power law tail of arbitrary spectral index. This permits us to model accurately the shape of the power law tails observed on particle species in the plasma sheet region, where the helicon mode is believed to play an important role. The presence of a hard power law tail on the oxygen component is found to dramatically enhance the maximum growth rate of the instability when the oxygen ions possess a smallT∥>T⊥anisotropy. Above a certain value ofT∥/T⊥,however, this behavior is reversed. The growth rate decreases as the spectral index of the protons is decreased. The relevance of these effects to the central plasma sheet region is briefly discussed. ©2000 American Institute of Physics.