Angela Hu 11R Oct 2016
Ice epidemic oral transcript
The couple didn’t know their toddler was dead until someone buying coffee at a local café stared
at the tiny, bruised body in the dirty pusher and said, "I think there's something wrong with
your little girl". There was something wrong, all right. The agitated man with the child's mother
had beaten the little girl earlier that day because she had wet her pants. If the mother knew how
badly her daughter was hurt, she did nothing about it. They had shoved the battered two-year-
old in the pusher and had gone out to score ‘ice’.
This is not some distant horror story from a crumbling Communist hellhole on the other side of
the world. It happened in Melbourne's inner suburbs, just a 20-minute car ride from PLC. This
innocent girl’s parents are just two of more than 200,000 ice users in Australia, who have been
targeted by the ice pandemic that is wreaking havoc in Australia. I firmly believe that in order to
tackle the ice epidemic by its roots, the Australian government needs to take a progressive, non-
punitive approach, by diverting ice addicts from the prison system, which is currently
overburdened and ineffective, and into treatment where possible. What we need is a greater
access to rehabilitation, particularly in country towns where ice addiction is most rife.
Here's the truth about the dangerously pure form of the drug called crystal methamphetamine
but known as ‘ice’ on the streets. Once the drug takes hold of you, everything else becomes
secondary – including your own child. It gives you a feeling of indestructible confidence and
energy. You are no longer aware of your limitations – all you know is that the euphoric rush is
addictive, and you need to feel it again. Before you know it, what started out as a bit of fun has
bled into all corners of your life. The insidious drug starts to control you and isolates you from
your loved ones. You become psychotic and erratic, and take risks you would never think about
taking before. You spend all your savings in your desperation to get your hands on more ice,
stealthily stripping your family of financial security.
There’s no denying that ice ruins people’s lives. Of all the modern epidemics of drug addiction,
the ice age that has struck Australia may well be the most pernicious of individual lives and
families. Australia’s ice scourge is tearing families apart, and has seen a dramatic increase in
road trauma and violence attached to methamphetamine. According to Western Australia’s
Chief Justice, the streets are ‘nowhere near as safe as they once were’, and the psychosis that
results from ice use has led to a ‘truly frightening’ number of murders and armed robberies
being committed – in 2015, ice use was linked to 14 killings across Victoria. The grim reality is
that no one is immune to the ice pandemic sweeping our country – not even you. With the surge
in ice-related crime, you could potentially be robbed or could become a secondary victim in
some way. More frightening is the fact that 70-80 per cent of all crime in Victorian rural
communities is ice-related - a scary statistic that comes straight from the local police. Indeed,
not only has this illicit drug ravaged our major cities, but it is now infiltrating and destroying
our beloved country towns one by one.
Ice is often distributed by ruthless and manipulative bikie gangs who target bored teenagers in
country towns, where police are under-resourced and there's a desperate lack of treatment
facilities. Take Horsham for example – a small regional Victorian city with a population of
around 15,000. On the outside, it seems to be another charming rural town, but upon closer
inspection, one would find syringes littering the front yards of homes, and doors carefully
Angela Hu 11R Oct 2016
locked from the inside. The town of Horsham has one of the highest rates of positive drug
driving results in Victoria with around 1 in 10 drivers testing positive. Yet local authorities are
woefully ill-equipped to deal with this epidemic. Around Australia, there are 1,500 publicly-
funded drug and alcohol rehab beds – a seemingly large number but, given the 32 thousand
requests that come in yearly for ice treatment alone, nowhere near enough. In spite of the
crippling costs of private treatment, desperate families of ice users are now turning to
unregulated private clinics to access whatever means they can to seek treatment, going to
extraordinary lengths to raise the cash. I can hear you asking – what’s wrong with having more
private care clinics than public rehab facilities? Given the financial burden of private treatment,
one would assume that it is of a higher standard than public rehab.
Unfortunately, although some private clinics are effective, the demand for treatment has created
a lucrative new business model. Professor Dan Lubman, one of Australia's most eminent
addiction experts, says that people are claiming to offer legitimate treatments that are not
actually based on evidence. Studies show that rehab is a gamble, with only around one in five ice
users still off the drug a year after treatment. Just last month, a supreme court judge in Victoria
described the private drug rehab industry as parasitical – taking money without being able to
demonstrate results. And what are the government doing about it? Appallingly, despite the fact
that families desperate to get their loved ones in treatment are being exploited, there are still no
plans to regulate private clinics. Without doubt, the government needs to organise a review
process for organisations not aligned with health fund providers to become accountable. This is
the crux of the problem – there is a complete lack of access to effective rehabilitation services,
even in the regional areas which need them the most. Some would argue that our current
strategy of arresting ice users is sufficient. But think about it - when ice addicts are arrested,
they serve their jail time, and are eventually released again to cause more chaos and to allow the
vicious cycle to repeat itself.
We need to ask ourselves - is prison and prohibition really a deterrent, or are we simply shifting
the problem rather than fixing it? For our nation to face the ice epidemic head-on, the
government needs to have the audacity to change their flawed, single-minded tactic of
punishment, and to focus on providing funding for rehabilitation that is conducive to
improvement in wellbeing and harm-reduction. They need to strive to make Australia a safer
place for all, and to restore the innocence of our country towns. And they need to do it today.
