Story by The Sydney Morning Herald.
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IN BYRON Bay, ice is a pain reliever and a party drug.
Byron Bay is certainly a party town for locals and tourists. Backpackers own the week but come the weekend, Brisbanites arrive en masse courtesy a two-hour dash down the freeway. So much fun also draws the down and out. Some want something to get them through the night, or the day.
Mainly its alcohol, but ice, or crystal meth (methamphetamine), the so-called “poor man’s cocaine”, has also become the drug of choice for some. The media has been banging on about an “ice epidemic” roaring through NSW. It affects every level: affluent suburban teenagers, the urban poor, and rural towns with large Aboriginal populations and disappearing jobs. Communities across the state have been battling the problem for about three years.
The Richmond Local Area Command – including Byron Bay – takes in the stretch of coast running between Tweed Heads and Ballina across to the Great Divide and provides a glimpse of the difficulties faced by authorities trying to stop the ice trade.
Police statistics show the number of people caught in possession or using amphetamines in the Tweed-Richmond area has increase from a handful each month to dozens since the start of 2014. There have been 100 people busted for dealing or trafficking ice in the past two years.
“It would be pretty easy for someone to take a kilogram of ice to Byron, that would give about 1500 deals,” a law enforcement source says. “That would supply that township for a whole month.”
Byron is now both a money spinner and a middle-class paradise, sporting middle-class house prices and rents replete with a surprising underbelly of poverty that informs drug usage beyond the hippy, music festival rager mind set.
The last census found the Richmond Valley – stretching from Ballina to Tweed Heads – had about 500 homeless people and 211 of them were sleeping rough. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said only the Sydney inner-city area had more homeless sleeping rough.
On October 13, the latest Baird government’s “breaking the ice” forums will be staged in Byron. It aims to help build and strengthen community partnerships by bringing together local police, health services, youth services, Family Drug Support and local non-government drug and alcohol services.
CHECK THIS LINK for more information about BREAKING THE ICE.