Impacts-of-methamphetamine-in-Victoria-Community-Assessment-Penington-Institute

That ABS analysis looked at 2010. It is quite likely, if not certain, that the size of the market hasgrown in Victoria substantially.It has been felt that methamphetamine use is more prevalent amongst certain occupations. Rocheand colleagues (2008) found that:“The hospitality industry, an industry that traditionally attracts large numbersof young workers, had the largest proportion of workers who usedmethamphetamine. Male workers, transport industry workers, constructionindustry workers, tradespeople and unskilled workers also reported highprevalence of methamphetamine use [26: 338].”Higher use in work areas that involve hard physical labour and long hours which may be related tothe drug’s ability to maintain alertness and energy is not surprising. It should be noted that thesedata are now at least six years old.The cultural contexts of methamphetamine useThere is a body of qualitative research that examines the cultural context of methamphetamine use inAustralia. This work documents some of the social environments of methamphetamine consumption,providing insight into why and how people use methamphetamine, how people managemethamphetamine-related harms, methamphetamine and poly-drug use and the role that physicaland cultural factors play in shaping methamphetamine use.Slavin [27, 28] researched gay men in Sydney, finding that for some, methamphetamine plays a keyrole in social events. Methamphetamine was commonly used among his participants to enhance sex,but also as part of a party culture. At the same time, he documents how some gay men manage thedrug (and its related harms) more successfully than others. He argues that for his participants,methamphetamine use was considered acceptable, whereas other drug use – such as heroin use –was not. Further, he documents a reluctance by some of his participants to use harm reductionservices such as NSP because they do not want to identify as ‘junkies’.Pennay has demonstrated that, for some young people, methamphetamine has become ‘normalised’and shows the way in which young people use this drug in the context of a ‘big night out’; that is, aperiod of more than 24 hours spent ‘partying’ [29]. Her documentation of methamphetamine useshows that rather than being a drug that makes people ‘out of control’, her participants usedmethamphetamine to ‘sober up’ in order to facilitate their entry into mainstream nightclubs. This isillustrated in the following quote from a participant in Pennay’s research:“If we're too pissed we'd usually have it [methamphetamine] to straighten us out. I never goanywhere without my little vial, just in case. If someone gets too fucked on ecstasy or toopissed or something I always carry it around, like an emergency, to straighten them out.”(Interview: December, 2006) [29: 413-414].Similarly, in research with young people from Perth [30], found that methamphetamine was a drugpeople considered kept them ’in control’ rather than a drug such as ‘ecstasy’ that could cause theuser to appear extremely intoxicated through facial spasms and so on. One of Green’s participantssaid of methamphetamine:“I find that the rock [crystal methamphetamine] just doesn’t affect my emotions at all. The E[MDMA] affects your emotions and that's not what I was after. I wanted to be in full controlof what I was doing, what I was feeling” [30: 406] .14