Abbott slams ice scourge

Tony Abbott described ice as "a drug epidemic way beyond anything that we have seen before." Photo / Getty Images

PM announces national crackdown on drug ‘destroying lives and families’.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday announced a crackdown on the "dreadful scourge" of ice, which experts have said is Australia's biggest drugs threat, destroying lives and causing psychosis, violence and crime.

A new taskforce, headed by retired Victorian Police Commissioner Ken Lay, will conduct an "urgent stocktake" of efforts to tackle the growing problem.

It will formulate a national strategy, with a "systematic, comprehensive and co-ordinated approach to education, health and law enforcement", Abbott said.

Releasing the first national snapshot, the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) said last month that 1.3 million people had tried methamphetamine in its highly addictive crystalline form, ice, known in New Zealand as P, or as a powder, speed.

That is one of the world's highest rates of use, with Australia particularly attractive to traffickers, the ACC says, because of its high street prices. A gram costs about US$500 ($663), compared with about US$80 in China. Use rates in Australia have almost doubled in the past year.

The arrest last year on a murder charge of Harriet Wran, daughter of the late NSW Premier Neville Wran, demonstrated ice's destructive impact at all levels of society. The federal Justice Minister, Michael Keenan, has called it a "mind-eating, personality-distorting, life-ending drug".

Abbott said: "It destroys lives, it ravages families, it damages communities ... It is far more potent, far more dangerous and far more addictive than any previous illicit drug ... This is a drug epidemic way beyond anything that we have seen before."

The taskforce will be overseen by Keenan and Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash - sending a signal, welcomed by drug experts, that ice is not just a law enforcement issue.

Official figures suggest about 400,000 Australians use methamphetamine every year, with about 100,000 using ice weekly. The problem is dire in regional areas, as well as in cities.

NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione warned last week that the drug could "bring us to our knees as a nation".

The ACC chief executive, Chris Dawson, said: "We are seeing weekly and daily homicides, drug-impaired driving ... aggression, violence and other crimes such as burglaries."