Meth crisis plays out as a horror movie on the wards

Anyone who thought our methamphetamine crisis was tapering off needed to spend Monday hearing witnesses give evidence to a committee of Parliament.

It was both sobering and terrifying.

“Can I paint you a picture, please,” began Royal Perth Hospital emergency doctor Jess Soderstrom. “I have not made any of these stories up.”

The quietly spoken physician then rattled off a series of accounts that mirrored scenes from that zombie television program The Walking Dead.

“A patient running naked in and out of traffic convinced that Godzilla was chasing him,” she said.

“A young woman cowering in the back of a paddy wagon convinced she had been fishing dead bodies out of the Swan River.”

The anecdotes were jarring. The set of facts the doctor then offered up to the Upper House committee of MPs looking at ways to counter the damage being done by illicit drugs were lamentable.

She said there were 29 cubicles in which patients entering the ED could be treated.

Of those, eight are almost permanently occupied by meth-affected admissions.

On average, the meth patients fill those cubicles for 11 hours and each patient has to have a nurse dedicated to treating and monitoring them for their own safety and that of those around them.

Not too far away are up to six security guards ready to subdue any meth-induced psychotic episodes.

Dr Soderstrom said that when all eight patients are in those cubicles and sedated there is a collective calm.

The lead-up to that period of peace is usually the complete opposite. “We work in an environment where violence is a given,” she said.

“It’s not uncommon for doctors and nurses to be punched, kicked, spat on and put in a headlock during a shift. The environment is a lot more chaotic.”

To put this into an even more alarming context, Dr Soderstrom was talking about only one emergency department in Perth.

But she was not finished and when the committee’s chairwoman, Greens MP Alison Xamon, asked what Dr Soderstrom knew about meth-related problems in rural areas, she drew on her experience as a consultant physician in Albany Hospital’s emergency department.

“It’s terrible,” she said bluntly. “The situation is much worse.” For example, the six security guards available to physically restrain meth patients are not on hand in Albany.

“In Albany, there are two,” she said. “They get put in a high-dependency unit where there are two nurses and it’s very unsafe.

“The security guards come from outside (the hospital) and they are not allowed to touch patients.”

The quietly spoken physician then rattled off a series of accounts that mirrored scenes from that zombie television program The Walking Dead.

If you think all that is scary, then factor in what the Police Commissioner Chris Dawson and Assistant Commissioner Gary Budge told the committee before Dr Solderstrom’s evidence.

Meth is flooding into WA, is of high purity and getting cheaper.

Just ask football legend Ron Alexander, who ran the State Government’s Methamphetamine Action Plan Taskforce, and painted his own depressing picture for the committee on Monday.

“It’s more available than it was 10 years ago and 50 per cent cheaper despite all the best efforts of law enforcement around the world,” he said.

“When I sat in rehab with people who had been using, they’d say come for a walk with me and I’ll find you three shots in 15 minutes.”

Which brings us back to the reasons the committee exists. What can be done about it?

Alexander is firmly of the view that doing the same is futile.

“We are supportive of your committee looking around the world at people who have been brave enough to try something different,” he told the MPs.

“What’s happening is the definition of lunacy.

“We’ve got people saying we’re tough on drugs, well, whoopie.

“We’re tough on drugs, but they are more readily available and nothing is changing.”

He then threw up the so-called “Portugal model”, which took the radical step of decriminalising illicit drugs in the 2000s.

Drug addicts were treated as patients rather than criminals.

The crime rate plummeted and police and the courts were able to concentrate only on the traffickers.

Alexander said it was “absolutely” worth investigating.

But he would know that such a quantum leap in thinking will require much courage and in a conservative State like WA that might be difficult to galvanise.

In the meantime, spare a thought for Dr Solderstrom and her colleagues at RPH tonight.