THE ICE AGE

VICTORIA is seeing the long-term mental health effects of an "ice"
epidemic that started several years ago.

Aggression, anxiety, psychotic episodes and brain injury are
increasingly evident among longer-term users of crystallised
methamphetamine, or ice, according to clinicians.

As the Bracks Government this week announced a crackdown on the drug
- -- diverting $14 million from the fight against heroin to counter the
ice plague -- a former Victoria Police drug investigator told The Age
that warnings about ice had been sounded for years

"We were seeing it come in from Indonesia in 2001 and back then it
was flagged as a major concern," he said. A visiting expert from the
US had highlighted increased homicide and assaults linked to ice use
soon after.

Police say they cannot comment on the precise number of users,
although methamphetamines are now the second-most commonly used
illicit drugs in Australia next to cannabis.

Chief executive of the Australian Drug Foundation Bill Stronach said
amphetamine use blew out amid a heroin drought about seven years ago.

Victoria Police last year busted 64 amphetamine laboratories,
compared with 30 busts in 2004.

Most labs produce methamphetamine in powder form, but all have the
capacity to make ice. Labs are often based in rental properties and
it is unclear whether increased detection reflects greater community
awareness or a burgeoning industry.

Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre director Nick Crofts, a member
of the Government's Amphetamines Taskforce, said long-term use of all
methamphetamines, including ice, could cause mental illness, although
accounts of psychosis were exaggerated.

"My impression is we are not so much seeing a new expansion of
methamphetamine use as we are seeing the maturation of a pattern of
use that has been going on for some years," Professor Crofts said.

Richard Smith, a clinician at the Raymond Hader Clinic, said 70 per
cent of clients were addicted to ice where previously 90 per cent had
been heroin-addicted. He said symptoms ranged from delusions and rage
episodes to anger and paranoia.

Mr Smith said that ice was more socially acceptable in the club scene
because it was smoked rather than injected.

"Go to any nightclub and a quarter of that nightclub will be using
ice, and another quarter will be using ecstasy," he said.

The warnings about the drug have come too late for "Tommy", a
26-year-old patient at the Hader Clinic.

A friend offered him a crack pipe loaded with ice. He liked it
instantly, but he was smoking the stuff for two weeks before he knew
what it was.

"I got into it through the rave scene. Usually I'd have a decent
amount in a night and it would keep me up that night and the next
day," he said.

After five months "I was paranoid of things that weren't there ...
people following me. It was the ice that really f----d me up," he said.

Five months after he began using the drug regularly, along with
ketamine, ecstasy and alcohol, his parents enrolled him at the clinic.

A health worker who asked not to be identified said users
experiencing psychotic episodes were extremely violent.

"They don't care who they hit, whether it's police, doctors, nurses.
Some will tell you later they have been using ice, often it is
marijuana and ice. They are out of control for three or four days."

Physician in addiction medicine Dr Mike McDonough of the Western
Hospital said methamphetamine was faster acting and slightly more
toxic than amphetamines and ecstasy.

He said users who had a predilection or vulnerability to mental
disorders, and were already prone to anxiety, slight paranoia,
depression and frank psychosis were "more likely to experience
aggressive and abnormal mental effects more quickly with this drug".

Faster acting drugs like methamphetamine, which also wear off
quickly, appeared to have a more addictive track record, Dr McDonough said.

Mr Stronach said that while amphetamines supplanted heroin at the
turn of the decade, ice had emerged strongly in the past three years.

He welcomed the Bracks Government directing $14 million into
education and prevention programs, but lamented that shifting the
money from heroin prevention was "not all that smart".

Ice What Is It?

- -- Amphetamines used illicitly include speed (amphetamine), ice
(methamphetamine) and ecstasy (MDMA).

- -- Methamphetamine is commonly sold as ice, which is the drug in
crystalline form.

- -- It appears as an opaque, rock-like crystal similar to crushed ice.
It is faster acting and more potent than conventional speed.

- -- Most commonly smoked in a glass pipe, it also can be inhaled or injected.

- -- Effects vary widely, including increased wakefulness, heightened
alertness, a sense of wellbeing and improved self-esteem.

- -- Prolonged use can result in paranoid psychosis, delusions,
hallucinations and violent rages.

- -- Costs about $300 a gram, sufficient for four hits.