ALARM BELLS AS OVERDOSES TRIPLE

The number of people suffering from overdoses of methamphetamine and some
related drugs has tripled within five years at Auckland Hospital.

The emergency department now has around one case every week on average.

And even occasional users of methamphetamine, known as "speed", face a
significant risk of suffering psychosis - a temporary or persisting mental
disorder - a seminar on the drug was told.

The Waitemata District Health Board, which runs regional drug and alcohol
services in Auckland, is so concerned about the drug's rapidly rising
popularity that it called health workers, police and Government
representatives together at the seminar to highlight the problem and
examine evidence on methamphetamine.

The board wants a national strategy to reduce methamphetamine use. It has
also joined the call by Gisborne pharmacists for the Government to
reclassify, as prescription-only, the cough and cold medicines used for the
illegal production of methamphetamine.

The pseudoephedrine medicines can now be bought over the counter.

The police believe methamphetamine and its purified form "P" have fuelled a
rise in violent crime.

Although alcohol remains the leading drug of abuse, health workers are
trying to work out how to control the problems of methamphetamine,
including the risks of spreading disease by injecting users sharing needles.

Auckland Hospital physician Dr Lynn Theron told the seminar that the
hospital's emergency department was seeing 50 to 60 patients a year who
indicated they had overdosed on amphetamines.

"Overdose presentations [from these drugs] have tripled in the last four or
five years."

They were mostly young Pakeha men, she said.

Overdose patients disclosing they had taken GHB, a sedative, numbered 162
last year, compared with 21 in 1999, while Ecstasy cases rose to 47, from 16.

An Auckland Hospital psychiatrist, Dr Angela Ryan, said
methamphetamine-related psychosis could be brief, lasting four days or
less, or could persist.

The psychosis persisted beyond four days in a third of cases.

Dr Ryan said that in 18 months working at Middlemore Hospital's acute
psychiatric unit, she had 10 patients admitted after using methamphetamine.
At least five of them developed schizophrenia for the first time or
suffered the recurrence of it.

Citing Japanese research, she said 6 per cent of occasional methamphetamine
users suffered psychosis. The risk shot up to 50 to 60 per cent for heavily
dependent users (although no distinction had been made between brief and
persisting psychosis).

" ... Once you have one psychotic episode the risk of having another is
really high with reuse. You have to stop using, but these people are
addicted, so it's an awful position for them to be in.

"Because methamphetamine is a more potent stimulant than any other, it
probably leads to progression to dependence quicker."

No medicines have proved useful in treating methamphetamine addiction and
there is only limited evidence of the benefit of behavioural therapies.

The seminar's main speaker, Australian psychologist Dr Amanda Baker, said:
"Little is known about how best to treat methamphetamine users."

Parliament is expected to vote next month on upgrading methamphetamine to a
class A drug, which would render dealers liable to life-imprisonment sentences.

Methamphetamine facts

* Street names include meth and speed. Crystallised form - with more
intensive effects - known as ice, crystal, glass, burn, pure and P.

* A stimulant that, like other amphetamines and cocaine, produces euphoria.
Works by stimulating release of neurotransmitter chemicals like dopamine in
the brain.

* Use linked to violence and brief or persisting psychosis. Symptoms of
psychosis can include delusions, hallucinations and paranoia.

* Costs $80-$150 a "point" (0.1 of a gram), which can produce several hits.

* 3.5 per cent of people in 2001 Auckland University-run survey were
"current users" of amphetamines/methamphetamine; 2.2 per cent in 1998.

* Around 17 per cent of clients at an Auckland drug and alcohol service
were dependent on amphetamines early last year; 5.8 per cent in first half
of 1999.