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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
New ice age is upon us and we must act now [AU]
    #5468318 - 04/01/06 05:39 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

New ice age is upon us and we must act now
April 2, 2006 - theage.com.au

It is time to rethink our approach to dangerous, illegal 'party' drugs.

METHAMPHETAMINES are the hot item on the drug markets. They have replaced amphetamines and come as a powder (speed), oily form (base) and crystals, known as ice. In particular it is the ice that has police, ambulance and hospital staff very worried.

It's pure, cheap, highly addictive and readily available. It gives the highest of highs as well as the lowest of lows. It can produce delusions, hallucinations and paranoia that can result in violent behaviour. US studies have linked ice use to increased risk of sexually transmissible infections and HIV particularly among gay men, and blood-borne viruses among those who inject.

Ice is a synthetically produced stimulant that can be smoked, injected, snorted, swallowed or inserted anally. It takes only seven seconds from taking a puff to the instant brain hit, three times faster than injecting. Dependent users spiral from highs lasting days into withdrawal and depression.

Australia has the gold medal for amphetamine usage, according to the latest World Drug Report. The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre estimates that almost one in 10 Australians has tried amphetamines. About half a million are current users with an estimated 73,000 dependent users.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, hospital admissions for psychosis due to amphetamines has increased by 60 per cent from 2000 to 2004. Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and NSW have been hardest hit.

Dr Venita Munir of St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, talks of two groups of users. The first comprises hard-core injecting drug users, who may add other drugs, such as heroin, and whose lives are often completely disconnected from the mainstream.

The other group, recreational users, take ice with ketamine and ecstasy and their lives are much more functional. They have jobs and access to greater levels of support.

Of course the latter can move from using speed to base to ice along with growing dependence and increasingly chaotic lives.

The new ice age presents formidable challenges to the police, to ambulance officers and to staff in emergency rooms, psychiatric services and drug treatment services. Inspector Steve James, of the Victoria Police, says the force must develop new methods of restraint, as existing methods, such as capsicum spray, often prove fruitless. Restraint requires diversion of resources as police often have to mind violent users in hospitals and police cells over several days.

St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney has responded by building its own rooms to contain violent ice users. At St Vincent's in Melbourne, there is a six-man team that welcomes, sedates and restrains violent patients.

Police have had to rethink their tactics of enforcement, as methamphetamines can be produced in small clandestine labs across Australia. Last year Victoria Police shut down 26 clandestine labs. They have entered into a series of partnerships, including one with the Real Estate Institute of Victoria to minimise the chance of rental properties becoming amphetamine labs.

Some experts suggest that the heroin drought has been replaced by an ice mountain, with users moving from heroin to ice. Our challenge is how to adequately police methamphetamines while preventing even nastier and more addictive drugs coming on to the market.

Perhaps the most urgent need is to expand treatment options that are currently limited to the generic forms of detoxification, rehabilitation and counselling. Specific services and specific pharmacotherapies do not exist, which is particularly relevant to long-term problematic users.

Dr Alex Wodak, director, alcohol and drug services at St Vincent's Sydney, says it is notoriously difficult to attract and retain amphetamine users simply because there is little to offer. His submission to conduct a trial of dexamphetamine substitution, much in the same way we use methadone for heroin users, continues to fall on deaf ears. Shouldn't someone be listening?


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Offlineblaze2
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Registered: 12/20/02
Posts: 1,883
Loc: San Antonio, TX
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Re: New ice age is upon us and we must act now [AU] [Re: veggie]
    #5468522 - 04/01/06 06:34 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

Dr Venita Munir of St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, talks of two groups of users. The first comprises hard-core injecting drug users, who may add other drugs, such as heroin, and whose lives are often completely disconnected from the mainstream.




Oh how horrible they are often completely disconnected from the mainstream, God forbid!


Some experts suggest that the heroin drought has been replaced by an ice mountain, with users moving from heroin to ice. Our challenge is how to adequately police methamphetamines while preventing even nastier and more addictive drugs coming on to the market.



first off whats worse a bunch of people who work really fast or a bunch of junkie herion hounds? second off whats nastier or more addictive than ice? nothing I can think of at least.


--------------------
"Religion without science is blind, Science without religion is lame." Albert Einstein

"peace is not maintained through force it is acheived through intelligence." Albert Einstein

"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
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OfflineSeussA
Error: divide byzero

Folding@home Statistics
Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 2 months, 20 days
Re: New ice age is upon us and we must act now [AU] [Re: blaze2]
    #5470077 - 04/02/06 04:55 AM (17 years, 9 months ago)

> second off whats nastier or more addictive than ice?

Nicotine is more addictive. This claim is backed by many studies. I will link to Erowid, but the web is full of references to studies that back up these numbers:

http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/addiction/addiction_journal1.shtml

Quote:

The numbers below are relative rankings, based on the experts' scores for each substance:

Nicotine 100
Ice, Glass (Methamphetamine smoked) 99
Crack 98
Crystal Meth (Methamphetamine injected) 93
Valium (Diazepam) 85
Quaalude (Methaqualone) 83
Seconal (Secobarbital) 82
Alcohol 81
Heroin 80
Crank (Amphetamine taken nasally) 78
Cocaine 72
Caffeine 68
PCP (Phencyclidine) 57
Marijuana 21
Ecstasy (MDMA) 20
Psilocybin Mushrooms 18
LSD 18
Mescaline 18

[Research by John Hastings]

[From: _In Health_, Nov/Dec 1990; eye-balling by Harel Barzilai;
relative rankings are definite, numbers given are (+/-)1%]




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InvisibleDepthToTheCore
JeeBuzz
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Registered: 05/05/04
Posts: 3,649
Loc: Australia brah
Re: New ice age is upon us and we must act now [AU] [Re: Seuss]
    #5472516 - 04/02/06 09:53 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

For anyone interested, there is a documentary called "The Ice Age" that goes with this report.

It isnt really about the drug itself, it follows the daily lives of several junkies and how it literqally destroys their lives.

http://abc.net.au/4corners/special_eds/20060320/


--------------------


"Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music." - George Carlin


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