Gay men in central Sydney
are LIVING in a community
in which the PREVALENCE
of HIV is similar to that of
sub-Saharan AFRICA, says
ACON board member Dr.
GARRETT PRESTAGE.
• Revised July 27
LIFE OR METH visited Sydney in 2003 to call for action to stop meth use in the gay community escalating, and warned that failure to act swiftly
would result in a mainstream catastrophe…
The November 2002 Gay Games had seen an influx of meth into Sydney when thousands of Americans descended on the city, injecting an edge to proceedings not felt at previous major events. Reflecting the failure to pre-emptively respond to the impending crisis when meth was gaining in popularity but largely contained within the gay community, Australia is now in the grip of a mainstream epidemic, with more than 100,000 using each week – it is particularly rife among those in their twenties – and 500,000 having used in the past year out of a population of 16 million. Meth was implicated in the deaths of at least 75 Australians in 2005, 50% more than in 2003, of which 33 occurred in NSW.
Around 73,000 Australians – 12,000 in Sydney alone – are now thought to be addicted to meth. A National Drugs and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) study shows that Australians are 1.5 times as dependent on meth as on heroin, and there are more meth addicts that heroin and cocaine combined. NDARC reports that two-thirds of regular meth users become addicts, the drug gaining social acceptance in the absence of hard-
hitting campaigns to stigmatise its use and in light of assurances from the HIV/AIDS sector that meth was "just another drug" and "only the flavour of the month". Last March, an ABC Four Corners documentary, The Ice Age, blamed the Australian government for failing to respond to the threat, while Insight on SBS recently featured an intensive studio debate on the scourge.
According to a 2,800-strong survey the number of gay men using crystal in Sydney almost doubled, from 12 to 20%, between 2002-04, falling slightly in 2005. The number of HIV+ meth users escalates to 32%. The Australian Society for HIV Medicine reported that 15.9% of newly-diagnosed HIV+ men who have sex with men (MSM) surveyed in 2004 were using meth at the time they believe they became infected. The overall rate of HIV diagnoses in Australian MSM rose 9% in 2005, with Victoria reporting the largest increase at 17% and Queensland leaping to 12%. NSW recorded a 7% increase, a return to 2002/03 levels after a dip in 2004. In the past five years, national HIV diagnoses in Australia have increased 41%; a rise that Health Minister Stephen Robertson blames on complacency.
Dr. Garrett Prestage, a lecturer at the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research and a board member of the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON), says that the prevalence of HIV in gay men in central Sydney is similar to that of sub-Saharan Africa. "For gay men, HIV is a massive epidemic," he told the Sun-Herald in November, contrasing Sydney's inner-city area – where 10 to 18% of the gay population is HIV+ – with Lesotho in Africa, where the rate of HIV infection was 20% in 2005 according to United Nations figures. ACON President Adrian Lovney described Prestage's "false claims" as "unhelpful" – a typically arrogant response from an organisation that has incurred substantial public wrath and loathing for its PC complacency and incompetence in responding to major health issues.
"It's time to clear away the politically correct nonsense, to stop focusing on fripperies such as gay marriage and other diversions and start focusing on something that will really assist gay men and the wider community: an intense campaign aimed at HIV/AIDS prevention."
~ John Heard [The Australian]
ACON's first crystal forum in July 2004 sparked intense debate and outrage when researchers asserted that there was no causal link between meth and unsafe sex, and that an "insignificant"
proportion of the community used the drug.
"There are a lot of serious issues associated with crystal but the sky's not falling in," Sean Slavin of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society said. Attendees reacted particularly angrily to ACON president Adrian Lovney's summing up: "We shouldn't be driving our response by anecdote." Community member Norrie May-Welby, speaking to the Sydney Star Observer after the forum, insisted that anecdotal evidence is a legitimate form of evidence. "I say there's enough smoke coming from the hills for us to call the fire brigade without us doing a research project just to check no-one is sending smoke signals," she said. Attendee Peter Dragicevich commented: "I think ACON has been strangely reluctant to work on a hard-hitting campaign aimed solely at keeping people off the drug."
ACON had previously described a sex club's decision to import anti-meth posters from the States as "not terribly helpful." Chief executive officer Stevie Clayton told the Star: "What happens is people who don't use crystal start thinking that crystal is the problem which is causing HIV transmission, and therefore if they don't use it they're not at risk, and people start thinking people who do use crystal are bad and are the people who are transmitting HIV."
Acknowledging it had been out of touch, at a follow-up forum Clayton conceded that community meetings were "successful in terms of information sharing – we think that people's personal experience is as important as formal research, so we're taking a lot from people's responses at the forums." Subsequent action, however, has seen ACON focusing squarely on harm reduction with a booklet detailing techniques for meth users, prompting a backlash among enraged community members in the form of CAAMA (Community for Action Against Meth Amphetamine), which chronicles the spread of meth in the gay community and holds ACON to account for denying the extent of the problem and misrepresenting established facts to avoid taking effective action. [See AID$ Inc. Uncovered]
Meanwhile, National Drugs and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) spokesman, Paul Dillon – who once called meth "the drug of the moment" – continues to dismiss convincing studies from the US linking meth use to HIV infection, stating in The Australian in 2005 that "other factors" are also at play; an opinion in conflict with numerous gay sex shop retailers in Sydney and Melbourne who report soaring sales of glass smoking pipes. A recent push by the Federal Government to ban "the pipes of death" nationally has failed. They are currently banned in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia.
Customs and the Australian Federal Police (AFP)
first warned of a new threat from a drug called ice in 1992, and lobbied the Federal Government at the time to develop a prevention campaign.
Meth first appeared in significant quantities in Sydney and Melbourne in 1998. Clandestine laboratories within Australia, particularly Queensland, have since joined Asian suppliers to meet surging demand. Chinese triad gangs and Hong Kong and Malaysian syndicates previously involved in heroin importation switched to meth because it can be made almost anywhere cheaply and, unlike cocaine and heroin, doesn't depend on crop cycles. As well as hitting the usual vulnerable groups, the wealthy mainstream Australian market has been targeted with devastating success. Australian law varies from state to state; from a $2000 fine and/or two years imprisonment for possession to a $500,000 fine and/or life imprisonment for supplying large amounts.
Australian customs meth seizures have mushroomed from 971gms in 1997/8, mostly arriving in disguised cargoes from China. In May 2003, Sydney police oversaw the seizure of 223kg of ice, a potent form of meth, which arrived at Port Botany inside packets of rice noodles, bringing the total seized within Australia in the space of a few days to 423kg. The following September 750kg of the precursor pseudoephedrine was found in a container from Cambodia. In October 2004, 125kg/US$74m of meth was found in hollowed-out candles, amounting to 1.25 million potential street deals.
Over $1 billion of meth has been seized on Australia's doorstep in the past three years alone, prompting NSW Police Minister John Watkins to accuse the federal government of not doing enough to catch drug smugglers. More shipping containers should be checked for ice, he said, following the disclosure that only 6% of the 2.1 million large shipping containers passing through Australia's ports this year were X-rayed or physically checked for drugs.
Domestically-manufactured crystal tends to be around 40% pure compared to 80%+ for imported meth – a bump of which will last three days – and up to 20 times stronger than normal speed. People arrested in NSW for meth offences rose by 253% between 1995-2005. Police in Victoria, who shut down 26 meth labs in 2005, have noted a sharp rise in ice users gripped by violent psychoses and are now using tasers (stun guns) to deal with this type of behaviour, while ambulance crews in the state are administering sedatives to violent meth patients. "They are uncontrollable without enormous doses of sedation," says paramedic Alan Eade, who liases with drug counselling services. In Sydney, hospitals are struggling to cope with a revolving door of meth addicted patients.
"If you look at all the gangland killings in Melbourne in the [past few] years, all the major players in that are associated with the methamphetamine industry."
~ Detective Senior Sergeant Jim O'Brien [Victoria Clandestine Laboratory Unit]
Meth's rise in Australia has been aided by its easy availability and the weakening strength of domestically-produced ecstasy, which can be as little as 5% pure and contain mostly ice. Following the pattern of North America, the poor quality and accessibility of ecstasy – which pushed the street price up to as much as $60 a pill in recent years – followed a massive police clampdown that served to fuel a huge demand and influx of meth into the metropolitan cities. Similarly, the prohibitive cost of cocaine, at around $250 a gram, has pushed it out of the reach of most.
In New Zealand, where up to 5% of the population have tried meth and a 17% rise in HIV transmissions was recorded in 2005, police are warning that a deadlier, more potent form is on the way.
"Crystal rock" is reported to be being distributed by well-organised gangs supplied by Chinese drug lords and millionaire businessmen, while a glut of meth on the illicit drug market is prompting sellers to engage in a price war and push "starter packs" for beginners. In the 1990s, New Zealander Matt Bowden developed a substitute drug from a natural compound called BZP (benzylpiperazine), which has a similar but softer and less addictive effect, to help wean him off meth. In 1999, the New Zealand government passed a law allowing licensed companies, including Bowden's, to make and sell BZP-based "herbal highs", which up to 20% of New Zealanders have tried. Evidence suggests that BZP has so far helped thousands to quit more dangerous habits, including ice. BZP is banned in Australia and the US but is legal in the United Kingdom.
Another source of supply of meth into Australia is Thailand, the world's largest market for meth per head of the population. Meth is produced in Thailand in huge quantities by a rebel militia group living in the jungles of neighbouring Burma and sold in pill form at around US$2.50 a hit. In 2002, Thailand's then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched a three-month "an-eye-for-an-eye" blitz against criminal gangs in a bid to make the country drug-free, netting many tons of meth among many drugs, all of which were incinerated. The controversial campaign led to over 1,000 killings and nearly 30,000 arrests.
• SMART RECOVER' for crystal users in Sydney: Clinical Services Team, St Vincents Hospital Alcohol and Drug Service. Ph: 02-9361-8020. email: cst@stvincents.com.au;
• CMA (Sydney) meets 7pm every Tuesday at Mission Australia Building, 4-10 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Stuart: 0410 324384;
• CAAMA: Australia's most informed crystal meth resourse;
• STATISTICS for meth users in New Zealand.
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