LONG-TIME Illawarra drug and alcohol worker Will Temple believes levels of ice use are nowhere near that of heroin in the 1970s, and that alcohol is by far society's biggest problem.
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Mr Temple is chief executive officer of Watershed Drug and Alcohol Recovery and Education Centre.
Mr Temple said he didn't believe NSW was in the grip of an ice epidemic, and that it was important to reduce demand instead of greater focus on supply.
"To actually call it an ice epidemic is quite harsh," he said.
"The numbers of people using ice over the past five years have increased, but not to an epidemic proportion."
While it was heroin during the 1970s and '80s, he said alcohol was now the main drug-related issue negatively impacting people's lives.
"The increases that we're seeing are in cannabis use and alcohol.
"They are the two increases that we're seeing over the past five years, and increasing dramatically. Ice is going up, but it's going up steadily.
"I think cannabis has always been a problem. I think now that people are starting to doctor it a bit more, they're playing with it, there's a lot of chemicals and stuff being included into it now.
"Alcohol has always been a major issue. While ice is out there and it is a nasty drug, it's not anywhere near the proportions that what heroin was back in the day . . . when we had Royal Commissions into that."
- Illawarra drug and alcohol worker Will Temple
"Am I saying that we don't have an ice problem?
"I'm not saying that at all.
"What we're seeing is that it's happening in pockets... Particularly within the Sydney region."
Mr Temple said he believed the supply reduction aspect of the National Drug Strategy was working. However, he said a two-pronged approach was required.
"I think we need to be mindful of the fact that there is another arm to the national drug strategy; the demand reduction, which is what we do. At the moment the budget is hugely skewed to supply reduction, to a point where you've got 90 per cent of the nation's drug and alcohol budget goes to supply reduction."
Mr Temple suggested there were misconceptions about whether users were actually taking ice.
"I think that a lot of people who think that they're taking ice are actually taking amphetamines," he said.
"I've got this sneaking suspicion that most of it is not (methamphetamine), because we're not seeing the type of withdrawal that we should be seeing with MDMA.
"Methamphetamine has a different chemical composition that is a lot more destructive on the body, a lot more destructive psychologically, and it's a lot more addictive. So just by that in its nature, we're not seeing it."
