Methamphetamine drug abuse in the Asia-Pacific region is among the highest levels in the world, with Australia up among the top eight countries who have named it as their most abused drug.

Experts were given some real education to the extent of the methamphetamine drug use at the inaugural Australasian Amphetamine conference in Sydney, Australia, recently.

Launching the 2005 United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime regional report on amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS)abuse, the regional director,Jeremy Douglas, reportedly said Australia was at the world's amphetamine core.

Robert Ali, who introduced the latest report from the Australian National Council on Drugs, said the size of the problem was daunting!

It is not only the socially disaffected who use the drug, but also the middle class of developing countries who are aspiring to greater wealth and prosperity, to the lifestyles and customs of developed countries.

When China can manufacture ecstacy tablets for eight cents each, and are producing them in quantities way beyond demand consumption, the drugs are moving like wildfire throughout the region. The drugs are sold in New Zealand, for instance, at up to NZ$100 each. That gives you some idea as to the profits that can be made in this drug trade.

There are, reportedly, 25 million people worldwide who use ATS, and eight of thirteen countries in the East Asia/Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand, who nominate it as their most abused drug.

In the Philipines, 23% of the population reported a lifetime abuse of drugs, and eleven labs were uncovered in the past year. Last year 15.8 million amphetamine tabs were seized in Thailand, 4.7 million in Laos and 2.7 million in Myanmur(Burma).

A New York drugs expert pointed to the successes of the methadone programme in tackling the heroin abuse over a number of decades, and called for a similar "harm minimisation" approach to replace the zero tolerance attitudes to drugs.Methadone has been given to heroin addicts to wean them off the heroin drug.

An Australian parliamentary health secretary, reportedly,said the government was open to exploring substitution drugs, but would not relax its zero tolerance stance.I believe that would be the opinion of the New Zealand Government as well.

The increase in what is called "P" or methamphetamine use in serious assaults and muurders in New Zealand in recent years has alarmed both the public and the government; it should concern the rest of the western world!