Smoking crystal methamphetamine is creating more addicts with severe health problems Smoking crystal methamphetamine is creating more addicts with severe health problems Source: Supplied

Smoking crystal methamphetamine is creating more addicts with severe health problems Source: Supplied

SMOKING the drug ice or crystal methamphetamine, rather than snorting or injecting, is becoming increasingly popular and the intense high is creating more addicts with severe health problems, a national science media briefing has heard. 
 
Australian National University research fellow Associate Professor Rebecca McKetin said
“historically, the forms of methamphetamine we had in Australia like speed, couldn’t be smoked”. But ice or crystal meth was different.

“Smoking is a much more accessible route of administration than injecting, but it is quite addictive,” she said.
“More addictive than if you snort the drug, which is what would happen with speed. It’s not so much a shift in who is using it, but the route of administration changing to smoking, and now we’re starting to see more problems.”


National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre director Professor Michael Farrell said smoking rapidly delivered the drug to the blood stream and into the brain, creating an intense high “in the initial experience”.
“It is relatively easy once you start using it to get dependent on it, reasonably quickly ... and from that you can get into significant difficulties,” he said.

Australian National University senior clinical lecturer Dr David Caldicott, formerly of the RAH, frequently encounters violent, paranoid ice addicts as an emergency consultant in Canberra.
“The picture you see in a 30 to 40 year old consumer is a patient who is presenting with a 60 to 70 year old’s circulation,” he said.

“All of those things you might associate with your grandparents over a long life, because of the nature of the drug and the escalation of the harms to the circulation, you see at a far earlier age.
“So to assume that a 20 or 30 year old couldn’t possibly have a heart attack — all bets are off if they are chronic methamphetamine consumers.”