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Lana Lam

Ice, crystal meth, whizz, crank … call it what you like, methamphetamine in its strongest form can deliver a hit 1,000 times greater than cocaine and it has never been easier to score in Australia - and Hong Kong plays a key role in this disturbing trend.
Whole communities ravaged by the highly-addictive stimulant, which can be smoked, snorted, injected or ingested orally, bear testimony to a growing illicit drugs trade at the centre of which is Guangdong province, the world's biggest single producer of the drug.
In Australia, one of the biggest markets, the potency of meth sold on the streets of Australia has skyrocketed to an all-time high, bringing a growing toll of death and misery.
Coupled with a switch from the less powerful powder form called speed to the stronger crystalline version also known as crystal meth or Ice, there is little wonder that the word epidemic is gaining currency as the army of addicts grows.
"All the data we have indicates a strong upward trend in problems related to crystal methamphetamine," said Professor Michael Farrell, director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in Sydney.
The centre's latest figures published this month found that 97 per cent of Ice users reported it was "easy" or "very easy" to get access to the drug this year, compared to 86 per cent last year.
The figures are based on annual surveys with people who inject drugs and those who take other drugs such as ecstasy.
Of those who inject drugs, the number taking crystal meth once a week increased to 67 per cent, up 6 percentage points compared to last year.
This group was particularly high-risk as they were often jobless, had been jailed before and had a history of mental health issues and substance abuse.
The report also found that the number of people dying as a result of methamphetamine use had jumped significantly from 3.4 per million in 2001 to 8.1 per million in 2013. Similarly, the number of people seeking hospital treatment for amphetamine-related problems had almost doubled since 2001 from 145 per million to 272 per million in 2013.
While Australia is no stranger to the devastating impact of methamphetamine with a previous spike in the number of users in 1998, there has been a significant shift in the past few years, with the strength of the drug trapping a new generation of users.

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An estimated 1.3 million people in Australia - which has a total population of 24 million - have smoked, snorted or injected methamphetamine at least once, according to a report released earlier this year by the Australian Crime Commission.
That report also said that 400,000 people had used meth within the last 12 months and that shipments from the mainland and Hong Kong made up a large percentage of seizures of the drug.
A national task force was set up in April to tackle what the then prime minster Tony Abbott labelled as an "epidemic" that was "beyond anything that we have seen before".
While drug and addiction experts say the number of users is actually stable, users are now getting hooked on the stronger and more addictive version of meth.
"We're not in an epidemic but what looks like has happened is that existing users have switched from using speed to using Ice," said Nicole Lee, associate professor at the National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction at Flinders University in South Australia.
"These are people using [Ice] fairly frequently, that is more than once a week, so it's a shift in severity, rather than numbers."
Lee said the latest figures show there has been a doubling in the number of people using Ice and a halving of people using speed. In previous years, less than 10 per cent used Ice weekly but that has increased to more than 15 per cent.
Lee added that there had also been "a sizeable shift in the purity of the drug".
"Speed and Ice are the same drug but Ice is a lot stronger. It's like the difference between light beer and a spirit. It's still alcohol but they're made in a different way and it's a different strength."
"So when you put all that together, we are seeing people using the drug more dangerously. They are using more potent forms and more frequently."
Those factors have created a perfect storm that causes greater damage to users and the community around them.
The latest figures show that the number of methamphetamine-related deaths has jumped from 88 in 2010 to 170 in 2013.
Lee said the relapse rate for Ice users was about 80 per cent, compared to the average relapse rate of 50 per cent for alcohol and other drugs.
"It's because the huge release of dopamine damages those systems, and it takes about 12 to 18 months before they feel better."
Methamphetamine affects a person's dopamine system - which releases feel-good chemicals - but the drug also affects the noradrenaline system, which activates a person's "fight or flight" response.
"People on meth are on heightened threat alert all the time so things that might not trigger an angry response from you or me, might for them," she said.
Lee said anti-drug campaigns which depict Ice users as violent, emaciated drop-outs, paint a far from typical profile.
"In fact, the typical Ice user is between 20 to 29 years old, male, employed, and they are still engaged with their families and functioning perfectly."
Australia has the highest rate of methamphetamine use among developed nations, primarily due to its geography.
"If you compare us to the UK, Canada and the US, the rate of use in Australia is three or four times higher," Lee said, with cocaine ranked as a more popular drug in those other countries.
"That's mostly due to availability as we're far away from the cocaine markets but we're quite close to the methamphetamine manufacturing and now lots of it is made in Australia."
Lee said that it was unlikely that large numbers of people would start taking Ice, but there was still cause for concern.
"It's like if you had a room of non-smokers, and you put a packet of cigarettes in front of them, they aren't going to pick up smoking just because it's there - and that's the same for meth.
"But the fact that people are using more dangerously is definitely a problem, particularly for our health services," she said, "but it's still a relatively small proportion of our population".
Lee said about 2.1 per cent of the population had used meth in the past 12 months, with about half of those trying Ice.
About 70 per cent of people who have used methamphetamine in the last 12 months are employed.


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Australian police show off methamphetamine which had been hidden in kayaks from China. Photo: AFP

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People are turning to the drug from the less harmful methamphetamine known as speed


Ice age: Meet 'crank', the new scourge of the Australian community

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}People are turning to the drug from the less harmful methamphetamine known as speed

People are turning to the drug from the less harmful methamphetamine known as speed