More fair and balanced reporting about Meth...

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'Ice' addiction growing
From: AAP
news.com.au

March 19, 2006


DOCTORS at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital want to prescribe amphetamines to help patients addicted to crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice.
Doctors interviewed in ABC Television's Four Corners program tomorrow say they are dealing with a five-fold increase in patients with ice-induced psychosis, since 2000.

The hospital's Dr Alex Wodak said a trial of the ice replacement drug Dexamphetamine has taken place in Australia but the Federal Government has not provided funding for more trials.

"I would like to have an effective pharmacological agent to treat these people, and I'd like to be able to do what my counterparts can do in the United Kingdom and treat those people who unfortunately have not benefited from every conventional health approach," Dr Wodak said.

"I'd like to treat some of them by prescribing amphetamines to them and in 2006 in Australia, that's hard to do."

St Vincent's emergency department head Gordian Fulde said the psychiatric effects of ice were worse than heroin and the hospital had been forced to build a cell to contain violent patients.

"These are the most out of control, the most violent human beings I have seen in my life, and I've been around for a long time," Dr Fulde said.

The Four Corners program features interviews with drug addicts including a man known as "Jason" who attempted to kick his addiction to ice and heroin.

Jason was prescribed an opiate blocker called Buprenorphine to ease his cravings for heroin but no medication was available to treat his ice addiction.

During the filming of the program he was arrested and charged with possessing ice and jailed.

Jason's girlfriend, known as "Susie", said she was concerned she may have harmed her unborn child by smoking ice.

"I don't know, but I suppose every pregnant person they sort of ... think maybe something happened or whatever," she said.

Susie said she intended to put the baby up for adoption once he was born.

"I do love him and ... I would love to raise him myself (but I) don't think that I'm in a position really to do that," she said.

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