By Jill Fraser
MELBOURNE, Australia
The Australian government announced on Wednesday the establishment of a task force to tackle the crystal methamphetamine “epidemic” facing the country, local media reported.
Unveiling the National Ice Taskforce – named after the slang term for ‘crystal meth’ – Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the federal government would work with local states and territories to develop a national strategy.
The announcement came as a survey by the Australian Drug Foundation found that seven percent of Australians aged 14 and over had used the highly addictive drug at least once.
“Australia is in the top few countries of the world for amphetamine use, including ice,” John Ryan, a member of Victoria’s Ice Action Taskforce and chief executive of the Penington Institute, told the Anadolu Agency.
The Australian Crime Commission considers ice to be one of the greatest dangers facing Australia, with rates of use more than doubling in the last 12 months, corresponding to a fall in the use of powdered methamphetamine, known as speed.
Cannabis remains the country’s most commonly used illicit drug, with 10 percent of over-14s having used the drug recently, according to the 2013 survey.
The national task force, led by former Victoria state police chief Ken Lay, will analyze current drug policy to identify ways to improve education, health and law enforcement approaches.
However, Ryan characterized Abbott’s declaration that ice use “is a drug epidemic way beyond anything that we have seen before now” as an “overstatement,” pointing out that tobacco kills the greatest number of people and the misuse of prescribed drugs is on the rise.
The Penington Institute, which researches substance abuse, has been urging the federal government to address ice use for several years. Ryan told AA he was concerned the new task force would just “skate along the surface.”
He said: “The risk is the committee won’t have enough resources – funding and expertise – to come up with a sensible way forward. You can’t skate along the surface. It needs to be a meaningful strategy.
“I also believe [in] more investment into early intervention and treatment.”
Ryan said that unlike heroin, which is prevalent in urban areas, ice is “a rural, suburban and city problem.”
At a press conference at the Australian Federal Police headquarters in Canberra on Wednesday, Abbott described ice’s “propensity for violence, the propensity to subsequent very serious mental illness, the propensity to disfigurement.”
He added: “As a citizen and as a parent, I am appalled at what is happening on our streets and in our homes.”
However, Ryan cautioned the government not to engage in a “scare campaign."
“The risk is that we repeat the same approach we’ve taken in the past, which has an impact on the drug market but doesn't have the sustainable resolution we should be aiming for,” he told AA.
Ryan urged the government to focus on “building the capacity of local communities, the links between police and health and social services and the links between GPs [general practitioners] and drug community services. It’s very much a community and local level where the solution lies, not in Canberra.”
The Royal Australian Navy is being urged to change its policies after an ABC News investigation revealed a spate of suicides, many ice-related, involving sailors from the navy’s HMAS Stirling training base in Western Australia.
