Pubdate: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Copyright: 2007 The Sydney Morning Herald Contact: http://www.smh.com.au/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/441 Author: Ruth Pollard Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) A FACTORY OVERDOSE FEEDING OUR STREETS South-East Asian Superlabs Churn Out Tonnes Of Illegal Drugs Each Week - Made For Australian Buyers, Writes Ruth Pollard. It is the new heavy industry with a ready-made Australian market - large-scale factories, employing a workforce of hundreds and capable of producing up to two tonnes of methamphetamine each week. From Indonesia to Malaysia, the Philippines to Cambodia, the industrial scale of drug production is surprising, and it is alarming the most seasoned experts. The biggest concern is the lack of a local market for amphetamine-type stimulants in these countries, so the bulk of what is produced is made solely for export - to Australia, New Zealand, Japan and, in some cases, the US. Run by transnational crime groups that have established factories in states with ineffective law enforcement, these huge drug operations are set up for long-term production, says Jeremy Douglas, the regional projects co-ordinator at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Bangkok. Douglas and his colleagues were in Canberra yesterday, presenting the latest evidence of the potential tide of amphetamines coming our way to the Australian Federal Police and other government agencies. "Drug production in South-East Asia has escalated in the last three to four years to what we would call industrial-style productions - these factories can produce between one and two tonnes of amphetamine-type stimulants every week," he warns. And it is not just the production and export of drugs on such a large scale that is worrying the UN - it is the money laundering and corruption that go with it, activities that will have a disastrous effect on the stability of governments in the region. Housed in huge warehouses, with millions invested in processing equipment and other infrastructure, these superlabs are the way of the future, Douglas says. There is also a trend towards mobile facilities, he says, pointing to a recent seizure of shipping containers containing methamphetamine labs. When a crime gang suspects its operation has been detected, it simply loads the container onto a ship and changes location, without losing a day of valuable drug production. "This is worrying for Australia as there is not a market for these drugs in places like Malaysia and Indonesia, so they need to export the drug to other, nearby, markets." Australia's first heroin overdose was officially recorded in the late 1960s. At that time, there were few drugs of any kind used on any scale. In just 40 years, we have gone from a nation of simple beer swillers to one that is awash with illicit drugs. There is now widespread use of substances that can alter our minds, make us feel up, down, or just plain out of it. "You have a period of 40 years where it has gone from little use of any of these drugs to just an explosion of use," says Richard Mattick, the director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of NSW. "There was relatively little use of amphetamines, no ecstasy, now it is commonplace." Mattick warns of a looming public health burden. As more people use drugs, the number of those who tip from harmless, occasional use into harmful, chronic, dependent use will increase. "Heroin still kills several hundred people in Australia every year, and more young people die from drug use than die from cancer. If you think about the impact of that on society, it is extraordinary." The growing epidemic of drug use has spilled over into stimulant drugs - ecstasy, cocaine, speed and the more potent crystal methamphetamine - and while the immediate impact of an overdose is less common, the cumulative effects can be devastating. "There is increasing evidence of quite severe heart disease caused by high blood pressure from chronic cocaine or methamphetamine use, and people are dying prematurely," Mattick says. Then there is the cost to families and the community as the relentless equation of addiction plays out: time + money + consumption + recovery = physical, financial and emotional hardship. And with an ageing population will come a population dependent on drugs, he predicts. "By 2050 I believe we will have a lot of people who are in retirement who are regular users of a range of drugs how the government deals with that will be a difficult question." The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre turned 20 this month, and now has a monitoring system of 1000 regular users, enabling it to track the extent of drug use as well as the price and availability of each drug on the market. If there is a new drug on the scene, the centre will identify it, with its complicated network of dealer contacts and users, as well as police, health workers, treatment centres and drug counsellors. Yet the potential impact of a further influx of methamphetamine on the streets of Sydney via huge drug labs in Asia remains a big unknown. "We have, to some extent, had some success in curtailing the production of crop-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin, yet there is a very large incentive for the industry to turn to manufacturing other drugs in less obvious ways, in factories, " Mattick says. "The size of manufacturing plants in parts of Asia means they are capable of churning out huge amounts of methamphetamine the capacity is huge and amount of money invested in these places is very substantial." Wayne Hall is a professor of public health policy at the University of Queensland. He lead the research centre through the mostly cannabis-based work of 1993-94 and into the devastating heroin epidemic that ran from mid-1996 until the so-called drought hit in 2001. "Things got torrid when it became clear we were in the midst of a heroin epidemic - there was a steep rise in overdoses until they numbered over 1000 per year, public injecting in inner-city Sydney and Melbourne, and lots of media coverage. We were putting out an annual bulletin on overdose deaths, and year after year it was just getting worse." Suddenly, as quickly as the epidemic hit, it was over and there was a precipitous fall in heroin overdose deaths due to a sharp reduction in availability. "You can date it almost to a month - between December 2000 and January 2001 - when heroin disappeared from our cities and a drug that had been cheap and freely available just disappeared simultaneously around the country." It resulted in a sustained 40 per cent reduction in overdose deaths, he says. Most heroin users are polydrug users - they consume whatever is available - so the switch to cocaine and then later, amphetamines, was inevitable. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the typical heroin user was in their late 20s or early 30s and was likely to be male. They were using heroin daily and drinking heavily, one-third to one-half were using benzodiazepines and smoking cannabis and almost all were tobacco smokers, as well as occasionally dabbling in amphetamines and cocaine. "There was simply a change in the proportion of intake devoted to heroin as opposed to other drugs," Hall says. It remains the same today. Data presented at this week's National Drug Trends Conference indicates the price of heroin has remained stable while use has increased slightly, the price and purity of methamphetamine are stable and use has fallen slightly, while those nominating ecstasy as their drug of choice has decreased marginally over the past four years. The director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, describes the development of large-scale drug production in Asia as the most worrying trend on the horizon. "We have had a steady rise now for more than 10 years in the number of people being arrested for amphetamine use and I don't think that is just a refection of tougher law enforcement, that is an indication of a growing problem." And a growth in use means an expanding potential market. There are surges in cocaine use as well, but it is methamphetamine that appears to be burgeoning, Weatherburn says. "The big concern everyone has is that prolonged and chronic use of these drugs tends to send the user paranoid, edgy, anxious and aggressive. But the assault levels in NSW have been fairly flat since 2001 while amphetamine use has been rising, so it takes time for these epidemics of drug use to play out." Another recent trend picked up by staff at the medically supervised injecting centre in Kings Cross is the emergence of brown and beige heroin from Afghanistan, as opposed to the usual white powder trafficked from the area known as the Golden Triangle in South-East Asia. "There has been no impact on the number of overdoses or overdose deaths, however brown heroin is not as clean to inject, it has to be heated and even then it is still a bit sludgy so it causes harm at the site of injection," Ingrid van Beek, the medical director of the injecting centre, says. A key informant in the illicit drug reporting system, the injecting centre monitors closely any changes in use of different drugs, as well as the folklore and myths that drive much of the information and practice shared by injecting drug users. "It is the most sensitive and timely indicator of drug supply that the country has. We are able to report on more than 200 visits per day at the injecting centre with the brown heroin, we were right there, we were able to see what arrangements people had made to heat and acidify the drug." NSW Police Force has established a special unit to deal with the clandestine drug laboratories cropping up in private houses that now produce much of the powdered methamphetamine used in Australia. "The main drug that is manufactured is methylamphetamine [methamphetamine], but in recent times we have seen the production of MDMA in these laboratories," says Detective Superintendent Greg Newbery, the commander of the drug squad. Along with cutting access to precursor drugs such as pseudoephedrine, police are also working with the pharmaceutical industry to reduce access to the other chemicals needed to manufacture amphetamines, Newbery says. And while the bulk of the powdered methamphetamine in Australia is manufactured locally, Newbery acknowledges that the crystallised version, known as ice or crystal, is being imported from overseas. As the United Nations notes, only co-ordinated, multinational efforts to anticipate trafficking from the drug factories of Asia will prevent that balance being tipped, and ensure that the very real potential for large-scale harm is avoided. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom