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NEWS: Surge in crystal meth use prompts concern at mental health effects - SMH

Mr Blonde

Mr Blonde

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Oct 1, 2006
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Brisbane, Australia
Deborah Smith
October 17, 2011
USE of crystal methamphetamine, or ice, by drug users in Australia has increased significantly since last year, research shows.

Almost half of injecting drug users and a quarter of regular ecstasy users this year reported using ice in the previous six months, a study on drug trends by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of NSW found.

Lucy Burns, a senior lecturer at the centre, said this was a worrying pattern because of the serious effects of ice on mental health. ''Methamphetamine is associated with psychosis, aggressive behaviour and unpredictability,'' Dr Burns said.

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She said a United Nations report last month showed use of amphetamine-type stimulants, such as ecstasy and methamphetamine, was surging around the world, making them the second most widely used illicit drug after cannabis.

The new Australian statistics, to be released at a conference in Sydney today, are based on the country's largest drug monitoring systems, which follow price, purity and availability, based on interviews with users, experts and other data.

Forty-five per cent of people who inject drugs said they had used ice in the previous six months - up from 39 per cent in 2010, but still less than the peak of 57 per cent in 2006.

Twenty-six per cent of regular ecstasy users had used it, an increase of 9 per cent. Dr Burns said one of the possible factors for the recent rise was US reports that it was easy to manufacture pure ice without special laboratories.

The impact of increased use here was also reflected in self-reports about mental health. The proportion of injecting drug users who said they had experienced a drug-induced psychosis in the previous six months more than doubled - from 3 per cent in 2010 to 7 per cent in 2011.

Twenty-eight per cent of regular ecstasy users also said their drug use had caused repeated problems with family, friends or colleagues - up from 20 per cent in 2010.

Heroin remains the drug of choice for 53 per cent of those who inject drugs, compared with 20 per cent for methamphetamine in speed, base or ice form.

Ecstasy, however, continued to lose its popularity, down from drug of choice for 37 per cent in 2010 to 27 per cent in 2011. This is about half the 52 per cent who nominated it as their drug of choice in 2003.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/heal...lth-effects-20111016-1lrkm.html#ixzz1ayxaIdN2
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Link.

Interesting to see the large drop off in ecstasy users coinciding with the drought of MDMA.
 
Yeah that's an incredible drop....53% rated ecstasy as drug of choice in 2003, only 27% in 2011.

Hopefully they release that report publicly, pretty sure they usually do.
 
So when is someone going to thank the AFP for destroying the MDMA trade and ushering in the meth epidemic.

8(
 
You can track down all the drug trends research by NDARC here. The IDRS and the EDRS are the two studies quoted in the media article. NDARC is running its annual drug trends conference in Sydney atm - hence the media interest I imagine...
 
Sadly this doesn't come as much of a surprise to me. I find - "Dr Burns said one of the possible factors for the recent rise was US reports that it was easy to manufacture pure ice without special laboratories." pretty funny, as though anything significant has changed in how simple it is to make "ice" quality/appearance meth.
 
I was going to quote that too.

Even your dumbest user in Australia knows that ice use has gone up due to the decline in the quality of pills.
 
Yeah this is more or less exactly what everyone was predicting when the MDMA drought first started.
 
acidprime said:
So when is someone going to thank the AFP for destroying the MDMA trade and ushering in the meth epidemic.

8(
Click to expand...

Dearest AFP,

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for cracking down on the relatively safe MDMA. It has been a wonderful thing for society, (in particular festival goers and clubbers) that there has been an MDMA shortage. I much prefer bumping in to violent drunk/methed up assholes when I go out than people on MDMA who might try to make friends with me or hug me. Security gards have also enjoyed this time as it gives them more people to test their UFC skills upon.

It’s even more wonderful that this has caused the increased popularity of a drug that is more harmful, both to the end user and often those around them.

We should all praise the logic of the AFP as clearly they have societies BEST interests in mind on this matter.

sarcastically yours
J.


But seriously no surprises here. It’s been obvious since 2009 that most of the crowds at clubs / festivals etc are no longer loved up on MDMA. I think I saw a post in another thread here that postulated the reasoning behind the safrole crack down by the AssholeFuckingPigs. It was to do with the massive popularity of ecstasy in the early to mid 2000s. So many people were on it, it was pretty much normalised amongst festival goers and clubbers as well as in the media. Makes sense that the powers that be would want to get rid of it as for the majority of users there was no problematic use, which challenges the notion that illicit drugs are all bad mmmk.
 
I was not surprised by the numbers at all either ; rather I just found it interesting to finally see it in percentage terms how far it has dropped, particularly when the media still likes to make a big deal out of 'ecstasy' as a drug.

Juvenile: You should send that letter to the AFP. I doubt it would accomplish much but it may at least make one worker for them stop and think about what they've done.
 
Mr Blonde said:
Interesting to see the large drop off in ecstasy users coinciding with the drought of MDMA.
Click to expand...

I am so frustrated that the media and Government do not, or choose not to connect these dots. It's such simple basic logic that I think a twelve year old could easily grasp the concept.
Instead when I saw it reported they left out the whole issue of the MDMA drought and adulterants, grouped all together in the "ecstasy" umbrella and wouldn't you know it the message to the general news viewer was:
"Ecstasy is a gateway drug for meth"

Such a horribly misleading and oversimplified approach.
I am getting really sick of this crap from the media.
 
^^ when has the media published anything but crap?

Im very much sure the Australian Fuck-head Police realise their mistake through destroying the worlds main saffrole source in Cambodia thus creating a methedemic, but they just dont wanna admitt it 8)
 
hell, even if they did admit it (which they won't) the higher up's in suits who control the aforementioned Australiah Fuck-head Police would be rubbing their greedy hands at the current situation, unfortunately it is the rich fuckwits that control everything.

Think about it from a financial point of view. It is in the interests of the big money makers to have more addictive drugs, inparticular stimulants such as Cocaine and Methamphetamine being used en masse by the populus. From a sales perpspective, you could potentially make a lot more money out of Repeated, high profit turnovers of the more addictive drugs than the low-return, high volume sale portfolio of MDMA.

The rich get richer the poor get poorer and the world keeps spinning on it's skewed angle...
 
^Don't know this sort of conspiracy stuff helps any. In my experience (as as former anti-drug, prohibitionist of sorts, albeit with loved ones suffering addictions, and now a regular drug user myself), the truth is most of the people you ascribe these views to believe that prohibition is the least worst of the options.

The arguments most often put, ie harm reduction - totally valid viewpoint re existing users but a concession that future generations will do what we do - and the relativity argument - alcohol and cigarettes are legal so why isn't x (insert DOC here) - are absolutely logical from a drug user's perspective...But not to a non-drug user.

From what I have observed, most such views are genuinely held, even by some people genuinely searching for a better answer. I used to count myself among those people but have now crossed to the user side (and noticed my views change accordingly).

But it is better to understand your opponents' true viewpoint and motivation, so you can address their concerns - real and imagined - rather than assign caricature villian views to them and celebrate the false victory of some non-existent debating points....
 
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Push for government funded pill testing as per The Netherlands and watch the problem solve itself.
 
I didn't really think meth use was high in my area... but i havn't been around younger drug users for along time.

Went out to a dodgy setup rave over the weekend.... there was pipes being hit as far as the eye could see, it was ridiculous and makes me sad. It was mostly young people too, all the regular oldies you see at the parties were no where near that stuff.

Its a disgrace, i'd say within the next 5 years the meth epidemic is going to be hitting health services really hard.
 
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