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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-02-15 Daily Xml
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Ice Action Strategy

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (14:43): My question is to the Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Minister. What is the South Australian government doing as part of the national ice strategy?

The Hon. L.A. VLAHOS (Taylor—Minister for Disabilities, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:43): I thank the member for Little Para for his question and interest in this topic from firsthand in his community. While most drug use in South Australia is decreasing or remaining static, methamphetamine use continues to rise, hurting individuals, families and communities. Alcohol and drug problems affect many people in our community, as many of us know in this chamber. That is why the Premier has created a task force to consider different ways we can reduce supply, demand and harm of this drug. Latest estimates show that approximately $5.7 million of SA's health budget is allocated to prevention and provision of treatment for people suffering from methamphetamine use issues.

As part of the National Ice Action Strategy and the South Australian Alcohol and Other Drug Strategy 2017-2021, the South Australian government is taking action to support families and communities by providing clinical services for people affected by drug problems. South Australia Health funds Family Drug Support to provide family support services to families in the Adelaide metropolitan area directly affected by substance misuse, and I have had the pleasure of hosting them in parliament last year.

Services include group meetings, telephone support and training programs. There are also plans to implement peer support programs to prevent harms from injecting and non-injecting use of methamphetamines for priority populations, including youth, ATSI communities and LGBTI communities in South Australia.

The South Australian government is also working on new guidelines on the management of acute methamphetamine-related presentations for our front-line clinical staff in South Australia's public hospitals. Having spoken with RAH emergency department physicians recently who have encountered this, the importance of this can't be stressed highly enough. It is vital we have coordinated responses across government agencies to ensure effective prevention, early intervention, law enforcement and treatment responses.

South Australia, along with other jurisdictions, supports the commonwealth's effort to address the ice scourge moving forward, but we have had little follow-through from the commonwealth which is making it hard for us to do the work we need to do. The South Australian government is willing to work across all departments and all levels of government to tackle the issues of alcohol and drug problems. I call on the federal minister Greg Hunt to provide some certainty about this issue as we move forward, to clarify exactly what their task force will be recommending and how they will implement it more thoroughly.

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