NEWS: Herald Sun - 21/02/07 'Bracks declares ice war'

[hoptis]

Bracks declares ice war
Ellen Whinnett, state politics reporter
February 21, 2007 12:00am

THE Bracks Government will launch a new offensive on drugs as the destructive amphetamine ice gains a deadly foothold in Victoria.
Premier Steve Bracks declared that tackling ice was among his top priorities in his third term.

A taskforce will crack down on ice dealers, provide aggressive treatment and rehabilitation for users, and investigate how many children are suffering abuse and neglect at the hands of addicts.

"We must not let ice take hold in Victoria," Mr Bracks told the Herald Sun in an exclusive interview.

"It is a highly addictive drug and we must act now to stop it having a devastating effect on our community."

Mr Bracks also detailed his third-term agenda in his first major interview since the November 25 election.

<snip, non-related stuff>

Mr Bracks said the Government, police and health officials wanted to attack ice before it became an epidemic.

He said $14 million to fight heroin addiction would be diverted to treat ice addicts.

Figures show heroin deaths falling as ice and amphetamine deaths continue to rise.

Heroin has claimed 604 Victorian lives in the past 6 1/2 years, while amphetamines, including ice, have taken 252 lives.

But heroin deaths have fallen from 186 in 2001-2002 to 43 last financial year, while amphetamine deaths have risen from 32 to 39 in the same period.

"We want to have a pre-emptive strike on ice. Too many people have died. The trend doesn't look good," Mr Bracks said.

"If we don't get in soon, we will find this issue is as big as heroin.

"We've still got a lot of money going into heroin – an enormous amount of resources. This is a sensible redistribution of money into a drug which is causing equivalent harm, is on the rise.

"We want to knock it out before it starts."

The plan will include fast-tracking laws to ban 100 chemicals used to make amphetamines such as ice as well as a crackdown on drug-fuelled dance parties.

Mr Bracks also released figures showing that cannabis and alcohol abuse are major problems.

Ice, the most potent form of amphetamine, is highly addictive and causes violent psychosis, hallucinations and paranoia. It can lead to strokes, heart attacks and seizures.

"It is one of the key health issues facing Victorians and one of the key things diminishing the quality of life of so many young Victorians," Mr Bracks said.

"The real issue is that any quantity can give you an addiction. There's no experimentation here. This is an addictive drug that is going to alter your mind and your brain and reduce your quality of life, if not cause your death."

Mr Bracks said the Government was deeply concerned about the impact of ice-addicted parents on children.

His action plan includes new police powers and laws to crack down on dealers and manufacturers and confronting advertisements detailing the horrors of ice.

New treatment programs will be set up in the Yarra, Port Phillip, Maribyrnong, Melbourne and Dandenong municipalities.

"The Victorian Government aggressively tackled the scourge of heroin, and while there is always work to do, heroin is no longer the problem it was," Mr Bracks said.

He said the $14 million would now be spent on education and prevention programs focused on ice.

It would include prevention and safety programs at dance parties and outreach programs aimed at young people living on the street.

Mr Bracks said police would get new powers and resources to tackle ice and other amphetamines at their source.

Offenders who own a pill press without lawful reason will face up to five years in prison or a fine of about $60,000, or both.

Laws outlawing the possession of large amounts of 100 chemicals that can be used to make ice will also be fast-tracked.

Herald Sun

 

[hoptis]

EDITORIAL
The Bracks agenda
February 21, 2007 12:00am
Article from: Herald-Sun

THREE months after Steve Bracks led Labor to a historic election win he has given the Herald Sun his agenda for his Government's third term.

Anyone looking for great vision will be disappointed. As with much of his term in office, Mr Bracks is more about prudent management than grand schemes. Certainly there's few fresh initiatives and a paucity of start dates.

Mostly he has pledged to get on at some time in the future with major projects that are already delayed, including the vital Port Phillip Bay channel deepening.

But one initiative that will be applauded is the diversion of $14 million from the successful anti-heroin campaign to combat amphetamines and alcohol abuse. We'd be a lot more comfortable with an additional allocation of funds, but this is a step in the right direction.

Herald Sun

 

[hoptis]

Ice war 'a disaster'
Jane Holroyd
February 21, 2007

A drugs expert has labelled the Bracks Government's plan to tackle ice and amphetamine use among Victorians as a knee-jerk reaction to the media's treatment of the subject.

Bill Stronach, chief executive of the Australian Drug Foundation, said he was disappointed about revelations that the Premier, Steve Bracks, plans to divert $14 million from current heroin programs to bolster efforts to tackle growing amphetamine use.

Mr Bracks and new Mental Health Minister, Lisa Neville, will this morning launch a new offensive against amphetamines, including police programs to target ice dealers, funding for aggressive treatment programs and a study on the impact of parents' amphetamine use on children.

The Government's plan to tackle amphetamine use includes a "confronting" advertising campaign detailing the side-effects of ice use. A taskforce will also be established to develop long-term strategies to tackle amphetamine use.

In a press release, Mr Bracks said new laws would also target amphetamine makers and dealers.

The Premier said a new law that came into effect yesterday banned the possession of a pill press without lawful cause, with offenders facing a penalty of up to five years' imprisonment or a fine of about $60,000.

Mr Stronach said while more people were using ice, which he described as a high-risk drug, there was not an epidemic that justified the diversion of funds from heroin treatment.

"I'm ambivalent. We have to keep the ice issue in perspective and recognise that it's not an epidemic," Mr Stronach told theage.com.au.

"It causes some serious problems, so on one hand I'm glad the Government is addressing it and looking particularly at ways we can best treat people who have got real problems with it. But on the other hand I'm very concerned because they're talking about taking $14 million away from heroin treatment programs and I think that's a disaster."

Heroin deaths have fallen from 186 in 2001-02 to 43 in the past financial year, while deaths from amphetamines have risen from 32 to 39 over the same period.

Mr Stronach said while heroin use had decreased, there were about 12,000 Victorians on methadone to treat heroin.

"(Heroin use) has dropped because we've put money into services and if you don't maintain those services the problems are likely to re-emerge," he said.

"We just can't afford to move money from one area - rob Peter to pay Paul. If they could find new money to treat ice that would be even better.

"Ice has been around for a while, amphetamines have been around for a long while, but we have seen a bit of an increase in ice use and it's certainly captured the popular and the media attention," he said.

"Two years ago we were (obsessed) with ecstasy use. Before that it was heroin. I think this emphasis on ice right now is short-sighted because in a couple of years' time it will be some new drug."

The Age

 

[hoptis]

Warning on cut to drug programs
David Rood
February 22, 2007

CUTTING spending on heroin programs to tackle the growing popularity of the amphetamine ice is "robbing Peter to pay Paul", a leading drug prevention group has warned.

The Australian Drug Foundation said the $14 million ice prevention and treatment program should come from new State Government spending because reallocating heroin funding was a gamble with "unwelcome consequences".

Foundation chief executive Bill Stronach commended the initiative on ice but said that while heroin deaths had decreased in recent years, the gains might not be maintained.

He said new drugs were always going to be appearing: ecstasy a few years ago and now ice. "We have to be careful we don't focus on one drug at the expense of others. We are dealing with people who are using drugs, rather than just the drugs themselves," Mr Stronach said.

The $14 million in funding will come from heroin education programs. Heroin deaths have fallen from 186 in 2000-01 to 43 in 2005-06, while last year there were 12 deaths from ice and amphetamines.

Premier Steve Bracks defended the decision to reallocate money for the ice initiative, saying about $20 million would remain in heroin programs and a "pre-emptive strike" on the ice problem was needed.

With heroin use significantly reduced, he said the Government was directing resources to where they were most needed.

"Ice has got a foothold but it will also get bigger if we don't take action," Mr Bracks said.

The Government has passed new laws making it illegal to own a press for making pills. A new Amphetamines Taskforce has also been established.

The Age

 

[hoptis]

The ice age

Photo: Tamara Dean

Ian Munro
February 24, 2007

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.

The Age

Flash presentation on The Age: What is ice?

 

[hoptis]

Impossible to stick users into pigeon holes
Larissa Dubecki
February 24, 2007

PAULA is 32, a real estate agent and a regular user of ice. She and her friends snort or smoke it on weekends — usually Friday night, which can bleed into Saturday night and Sunday morning.

"It's like ecstasy because I get a sore jaw from grinding (my teeth), but it makes me feel like I have so much energy. It makes things easy. I'm confident, I can talk to anyone, it makes things fun for me," she says.

Paula was a regular user of ecstasy and speed when a friend introduced her to ice a year ago. Since then, the other drugs have fallen by the wayside with the exception of marijuana, which she smokes to come down from ice's long-lasting, frenetic high.

"The thing that sucks is going back to work on a Monday morning. Sometimes I've only had a few hours' sleep since Thursday night and the first few days at work I'm a complete wreck," she says, maintaining that she is not addicted and would never inject it. Paula is typical of ice users in that she defies attempts to pigeonhole users of the drug into convenient stereotypes, says Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre director Nick Crofts.

"Methamphetamine is used by different groups in society in different social situations. Its use is much patchier than heroin. It's used by stockbrokers, gay party-goers and street polydrug junkies," he says.

Anecdotal evidence abounds of ice users becoming violent. An employee at a Chapel Street nightclub said he could often tell when a patron was on ice. "They're twitchy, they're mouthy, they pick fights for no reason and make the bouncers' lives hell, basically," he said.

The Age

 

[ilikeacid]

An employee at a Chapel Street nightclub said he could often tell when a patron was on ice. "They're twitchy, they're mouthy, they pick fights for no reason and make the bouncers' lives hell, basically," he said.

Sure they're not drunk?
God when will this Ice hysteria subside? We need a 2-cb epidemic to start up instead.. the papers would go wild

 

[stealthtrucker]

WTF? $300 a gram for 4 hits?

A gram is basically 10 hits for me.

 

[chugs]

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

wow, obviously the journo is into his speed if 4 hits is all he gets out of a gram

 

[Just_A_Bloke]

HAHAHA, thats a journo that loves a big burn

 

[phase_dancer]

The plan will include fast-tracking laws to ban 100 chemicals used to make amphetamines such as ice.....

That's an interesting statement, as purer/ concentrated forms of chemicals used in the manufacture of drugs are already restricted - well, most of the important one's anyway.

But what does the Bracks government hope to do about over the counter sources of chemicals? Speed, meth, and many more exotic PEAs and amphetamines can be made by completely over the counter processes, recipes for which abound.

With the present desperation shown by meth producers and the like, what makes anyone think that such measures will stop manufacturing? All it's likely to do is kill more users. PMA is a classic example; easy to obtain the required "ingredients" OTC, with the methoxy moiety able to withstand extreme conditions that the Methylenedioxy group would not. In other words; in the world of "crowbar" chemistry, PMA is easier to make.

There are also countless other routes to meth, some of which can be done with OTC products.

The picture is so much bigger than that which politicians like to paint. How about reducing demand and harm concurrently with consistant monitoring, rather than adopting a one eyed strategy that will essentially force users and manufacturers to resort to such alternatives?

I like many am finding that sitting in front of a crystal ball gets very depressing 8)

 

[ilikeacid]

I may not have been old enough to remember the real hype over the heroin epidemic but I do remember the governments responses over time - crack down ie. harsher penalties, more policing, the creation of a new social stigma for H. I probably should not be surprised but why is the "correct" political response always a so-called crack down? Isn't a Labor government supposed to be the more compassionate one? The more politics is relied upon to come up with solutions to a national Ice epidemic, the more the true solutions to the problem will be pushed to the background.

Facing the fact that a news headline like, "200 more cops to crack down on the Ice Menace" will draw more attention than a headline, "300 social workers employed to rehabilitate methamphetamine addicts" is a sad thing. The rhetoric never solves the problem or heals the afflicted; it simply gives a (false?) sense of security to those who will probably never be exposed to the drug in their entire lives. Fuck I hate the major parties