Defusing A Time Bomb Takes A Logical Approach

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday July 10, 2007

COMMENT Malcolm Knox

ICE is not about to turn your healthy son or daughter into a wild-eyed addict. Nor is it going to transform your normal partner or friend or workmate into a homicidal Incredible Hulk. There is no evidence that the use of ice, or any other form of methamphetamine, is skyrocketing towards a generational scourge or epidemic.

The real ice problem has been obscured by ideology. Is publicity about ice yet another scare campaign against yet another "demon drug"? Or are those in favour of harm reduction leaving society open to the degradations of permissiveness?

Those are ideology-driven positions rather than conclusions based on one salient fact, which is that methamphetamine can have a uniquely devastating effect on vulnerable individuals. When we talk about the toll a drug can take on society, no toll is greater than death and injury brought to individuals. No other illicit drug has the same potential to put a susceptible user into a deadly frame of mind.

The best analogy for the present ideological stand-off is the debate over gun control. Most people who own guns, just like most people who use ice - and there are tens of thousands - do so without causing any harm to anybody. The vast majority of ice users will have a go infrequently and decide it's not for them.

But just as guns are dangerous if they fall into the hands of particular individuals, so does methamphetamine turn some people into time bombs. That danger cannot be denied by the harm reductionists, any more than the danger of guns can be denied by sporting shooters. (It's worth noting that the same people will find themselves arguing opposite positions in these two debates: that's the power of ideology.)

The Herald's revelation of how many violent crimes have been committed under the influence of meth is not intended to cause fear. It's to highlight how we won't know what kind of problem we're dealing with until we're honest and rigorous in gathering knowledge.

It is wrong that homicides committed by meth users are not catalogued as meth crimes: there are always complicating factors, but there are complicating factors in gun crimes, too, and that doesn't stop authorities keeping track of them. There are so many complicating factors with crime that it's impossible to prove that a drug is the causative factor.

We can't prove smoking causes cancer and we can't prove carbon emissions cause global warming. But where lives are concerned, we can have enough knowledge to trigger action, even if it falls short of absolute proof.

Those who work in health, law enforcement and welfare - on the front line - agree on two things. One is that the overall prevalence of ice use probably peaked a year or two ago and is on the decline. The other is that the extreme meth situations are ever more dangerous.

The neurotoxicity of meth is cumulative, so a heavy user is getting closer to a psychotic reaction, deeper into paranoia, every time he or she gets high.

The less visible costs of ice - the building depression, anxiety, insomnia and other mental health and mood disorders - only get worse over time.

Education is not necessarily the panacea. People, particularly the young, know what meth does. It makes them feel great. That's why they take it. The comedown is bad, but they know that, too. They think it's part of the trade-off.

When they can't deal with the comedown, they don't use the drug any more. It's that kind of street education, or common sense, that keeps regular stimulant use below 4 per cent of the population, where it has been for more than 30 years.

The Federal Government is to start spending $150 million countering methamphetamines next year. It will give that money to law enforcement, so that supply can be cut.

It will fund worthy programs such as Project STOP, which makes pseudoephedrine harder to obtain. It will fund welfare organisations to set up treatment units that will be used most of the time for angry drunks, who outnumber ice users by many multiples.

And it will fund education for zero-tolerance programs in schools, to gain political points by reassuring parents, while leaving children thinking that they still learn more from each other than from authorities.

If it's really serious, though, the Government will target people on the margins, who are taking the greatest risks. It will aid the search for a pharmacotherapeutic solution, a methadone for ice users.

It may not be a vote winner in the suburbs, but a sound anti-ice program will fund treatment and harm reduction for those who are moving closer to disaster, step by step. The principal aim is to keep people alive - users and their potential victims alike.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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