Regional Australia regularly gets shafted in terms of access to health services, employment and income, so while it may not be all that surprising, it’s still pretty worrying to learn that methamphetamine use is vastly more common in remote areas as in cities.
Today, new figures from the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare, via ABC News, have concluded that people living in remote areas of Australia are “twice as likely” to use methamphetamines, compared with those in other places.
The figures also showed that “people in the lowest socioeconomic status group, the unemployed, people in remote and very remote areas, and Indigenous Australians” are also more likely to smoke daily and drink alcohol in “dangerous quantities” than those in other groups.
This trend is already taking a toll on services. Just yesterday, the Salvation Army, which runs drug treatment centers around the country, reported an 88% rise in people seeking treatment for ice addiction in Townsville, North Queensland, over the past year.
“We’re [talking] about just utter devastation of small rural communities,” a UnitingCare nurse from rural Victoria told The ABC’s Four Corners recently. “We’re going to have a lot of mental health issues, a lot of criminal activity … it’s going to be a nightmare.”
For a more in-depth look, SBS2’s The Feed recently put together an excellent segment on the impact that ice has on families and communities in Australia’s rural areas, but be warned, it’s pretty sad stuff.
In related, crappy news, educators in NSW have expressed dismay at the state government’s recent decision stop funding the Ted Noffs Foundation’s School Program, the only specialised drug counselling service of its type aimed at state high schools.
While the NSW Department of Education forbids staff from speaking publicly on such issues, principals from around the state have expressed dismay at the incursion of ice into their schools, and fear of “the gap that will be left” when the program is cancelled.
