Opinion: Has Australia already lost the war to crystal meth?

Australia is sleepwalking towards a drug nightmare ... and the worst thing is, the warning signs couldn’t be any more obvious, writes Des Houghton.

The economic and social cost of the crystal meth in Australia is staggering.

Has Australia already lost the war to contain crystal meth, the so-called devil’s drug?

Perhaps. If not, we are getting close. I fear we are sleepwalking towards a national calamity and ignoring the warning signs – the unimaginable criminal violence, the daily disruptions in our hospital emergency wards by addicts and the disturbing mental health wreckage for which there seems no real treatment.

Then there is the questionable behaviour of child safety departments that allow children to stay in homes where one or both parents are ice addicts. There should be a zero-tolerance approach with the children removed; indefinitely if needs be.

Apart from the emotional loss with the destruction of lives and families, there is a staggering economic cost of methamphetamine that is trafficked in its purest form as crystal meth or ice. It is trafficked by international crime syndicates in its powdered form known as speed or crank.

The Australian Institute of Criminality estimates the cost of serious and organised crime in this country is $60.1bn a year.

A small quantity of methamphetamine seized by police at Schoolies. File picture

That’s the cost of law enforcement, the cost of running prisons and courts, and the lost output of drug users while in treatment. Then add in the soaring cost of welfare and medical services needed to clean up the mess.

Taxpayers’ money lost to the economy through illicit drugs is enough to build 10 or 11 Olympic stadiums, six or seven hospitals or a row of Clem-7 tunnels with new bridges. So we all have skin in the game.

And there is a disturbing new trend.

Police complain of woke courts reluctant to hand out custodial sentences, even to some offenders caught with not insignificant parcels of drugs.

Yep, I’m ashamed to say we are a nation that is soft on drugs. And we are already paying a terrible price for that, even though most of us don’t know it.

Judges who mistake their role for social workers should be glad that some addicts spend much of their adult lives in prison.

Jail might be the best place for offenders to get the therapeutic services they need to treat complex mental health issues and the self-inflicted cognitive disabilities they suffer due to drug abuse.

Meth is often manufactured by crime syndicates that target countries like Australia and Japan because there are plenty of users willing to pay the higher prices for it. Cost-of-living crisis? What cost-of-living crisis?

Oddly, most of the users are from lower socio-economic groups who can least afford it, according to the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.

Australians are the second biggest users of methamphetamine per capita, according to an international health collective called SCORE that compares the wastewater drug analysis from sewage treatment plants in 120 cities in 37 countries.

Up to 400,000 Australians take ice every year and it is highly addictive so they will have to take it again and again and start selling to others to pay for their habit.

Ice is creating a national crisis. It does not get the attention it deserves, in my view.

The latest Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission report on wastewater analysis identifying drug use was ignored by the media, political leaders and criminologists that I can see.

Where was the outcry from the police chiefs and the medical fraternity who are usually so willing to point out failures in public health?

There is supposed to be a federal government National Ice Action Strategy, but I haven’t heard a peep out of it for years.

The strategy group reported some time ago that workers in mining, construction, and transport industries were particularly vulnerable to alcohol and drugs because of the stressful nature of the work.

So is there enough grassroots education and policing, I wonder, in these industries where crystal meth seems to be the drug of choice?

Shane Neilson, the principal drugs adviser at the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, refers to Australia as a “stimulant nation”.

He leads the commission’s national wastewater drug monitoring program.

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s Shane Neilson.

However, Neilson challenges my assumption that Australia is losing the war on drugs. He says law enforcement agencies including the Australian Federal Police, Border Force and state police are now seizing more illicit drugs than those consumed.

The ACIC says Australians spend $10.58bn on meth a year.

All up, $12.7bn was spent on the top five illicit drugs. A fresh report with updated figures is due next March.

“I would be amazed if that figure had reduced over the last 12 months,” he said.

“Methamphetamine is, we think, by far the most harmful illicit drug.’’

There is another problem.

“The trouble is it is really hard to get people off meth,” said Neilson.

His colleague Amber Migus, the director of data analytics at the ACIC, agrees.

“Unlike opioids like heroin where there is methadone treatment there is no pharmacotherapy treatment for methamphetamine at this point in time, so treatment is very hard,” she said.

“There are a lot of researchers out there trying for breakthroughs, but they haven’t reached those yet.

“We don’t have a large-scale ability to treat methamphetamine. We don’t have a solution at this point in time.”

Neilson warned the high prices paid for the drugs and the fabulous profits enjoyed by the crime syndicates led him to believe the meth trade was likely to get worse.

Drugs that cost a few thousand to make in Asia have a street value in Australia of hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said.

“The thing that staggers us is the costs (users are willing to pay).”

“Despite the cost-of-living crisis people can still find more than $12bn to spend on illicit drugs. And these people are not people with large disposable incomes.

“A lot of people who consume methamphetamine are from the lower socio demographics in society.

“So they have to commit crime. They have to sell some of their drugs to fund their consumption.

“This is what organised crime does. It recruits these people to sell it and consume it.’’

Commander Paula Hudson of the Australian Federal Police. Picture: Richard Dobson

FEDERAL POLICE DISRUPT TRADE

One of the nation’s top cops says drug gangs spare no remorse about the pain and misery they inflict on Australian families.

Paula Hudson, assistant commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, said organised crime syndicates were importing high volumes of illicit drugs and causing the greatest harm to Australians.

She said the AFP seized a record amount of methamphetamine in the past 12 months, some produced in North America and Mexico.

In the previous year large hauls of methamphetamine produced in Southeast Asia were seized.

“Organised criminal networks run their criminal activities like a business; the AFP targets all aspects of the criminal drug business model, including the important key enablers of money laundering, supply chain vulnerabilities and criminal communications,’’ Hudson said.

Along the way they fuelled violence and caused harm to the health and physical safety of the Australian community, she said.

“Criminal groups will make any attempt to profit from the misery of others, with no thought given to the pain these substances inflict on Australian families,” Hudson said.

The AFP and its international partners worked tirelessly to disrupt the drug trade.

“The AFP’s presence in 36 countries, underscored by relationships maintained over decades, allows us to identify where offenders are hiding, and share relevant intelligence with our trusted partners.,” she said.

Hudson praised the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission wastewater drug monitoring program.

It showed Australia’s methamphetamine consumption rose consistently at an annual rate of 17 per cent in the three years from 2016
to 2019