Australia’s deadly love affair with methamphetamine is getting worse – and fast.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
And Echuca is far from immune according to Echuca Regional Health emergency department director Simon Judkins.
Dr Judkins, who has been at the helm of our hospital’s frontline for past six years and working in emergency medicine for 36 years, has seen it all, and is not happy with where it’s going.
He said increasingly it was hard to separate the chronic use and the mental health of addicts.
It is, he believes, “a chicken and egg” challenge because each contributes to the other and it “is very difficult to manage”.
The latest research from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre shows meth, or ice, related harms are substantial and continue to rise, with overdose deaths, hospitalisations and consumption at record levels.
In 2024, there were 753 overdose deaths involving amphetamine-type stimulants (primarily methamphetamine), or a rate of 2.9 deaths per 100,000 people, which is substantially higher than in previous years.
There were also nearly 14,000 hospitalisations due to methamphetamine use in 2023-24, which represents 24 per cent of all drug-related hospitalisations.
While there are overdose deaths in Echuca-Moama, Dr Judkins said people who had overdosed and were brought to the hospital survived.
NDARC researchers led by Associate Professor Amy Peacock said the continuation of concerning pre-Covid patterns of rising harms was driven by both increased global supply and strong local demand for the illicit drug.
“While the extent of methamphetamine use can be difficult to calculate, available evidence suggests Australia still has one of the highest recorded rates in the world,” she said.
“Methamphetamine remains the most commonly reported drug last injected among people attending needle and syringe programs, and its use is increasingly concentrated in the more potent crystal form among people who inject drugs.
“Wastewater drug monitoring analysis also shows record levels of consumption in 2024-25 across all states and territories – an estimated 15.8 tonnes was detected – but was particularly elevated in regional areas.”
In addition to the record-high deaths and hospitalisations, the team also points out that the burden of methamphetamine-related harms had steadily shifted to older age groups.
Dr Judkins agrees and says it is a problem which particularly impacts with users who present at the hospital after drug use the night before or early in the morning.
He said those people could be in a state which leads to aggression and that can be a challenge for ERH staff.
“Drug related violence is increasingly an ED issue, and Echuca is no different,” Dr Judkins explained.
“But where it occurs in big hospitals, such as the Royal Melbourne, they have a lot of staff on hand, they have guards and a lot of police available at short notice,” he said.
“Our staff here are fantastic and we are constantly looking at how we manage this, but in the final analysis, we are a small hospital and only have so many staff.
“Our local police are also great, but they don’t have big numbers either and are multitasking and stretched thin.”
Dr Judkins said while ERH had not had any serious issues there had been cases of staff harmed.
But he still felt the ED team, in particular, and the ERH staff in general, are keeping ahead of the challenge right now.
“Our staff are well trained and experienced in these areas and can catch signs that some patients need to be monitored more closely,” he said.
“We have people who re-present and that is just one of our red flags, as they usually have signs of agitation and aggression and while staff are wary, we do know our community pretty well.
“But we are dealing with a growing population here and occasionally our system, any system, can get overloaded although fortunately, when compared with other hospitals, our wait times are much shorter and that does help keep things calmer.”
What is meth?
Methamphetamine is a man-made stimulant drug – a more potent form of the drug amphetamine.
Both amphetamine and methamphetamine belong to the ‘stimulant’ class of drugs, which also includes ecstasy and cocaine.
These drugs stimulate the brain and central nervous system.
There are different forms of methamphetamine, generally distinguished by their appearance and perceived purity.
The three main forms are:
- Crystalline (ice or crystal)
- Powder (speed)
- Base
Crystalline methamphetamine (ice) is a highly purified form of methamphetamine with a crystal-like appearance.
The only difference between ice and the other methamphetamines, speed and base, is that ice undergoes additional refinement to remove impurities.
Ecstasy, which is sold as a tablet, is also a methamphetamine derivative.
Amphetamine was first synthesised in 1887 and was used in the 1930s to treat asthma.
Today, amphetamines and amphetamine derivatives are used in the treatment of narcolepsy (a sleep disorder) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
In 1935, a study of the effects of amphetamine in hospital workers found the most commonly reported effects were a sense of wellbeing and exhilaration, and reduced fatigue, while during World War II amphetamine was extensively used to combat fatigue and increase alertness in soldiers.