Over the past week, regional Fairfax newspapers across the country have been filing articles on how the ice epidemic has affected their area and the stories have been depressingly familiar.

Bathurst paramedics say they respond to a “few” ice incidents each week and officers can never be sure what they will find when they arrive.

Because one of the most concerning aspects of the current epidemic – in addition to the untold damage users are doing to themselves each time they chase their next high – is the erratic behaviour ice users display when on the drug.

They can be, in turns, violent and paranoid, a real danger to themselves, the health professionals and the general public.

Where junkies of generations past may have quietly slipped into a drug-induced stupor until the high was over, today’s ice users can fly into an uncontrollable rage in an instant.

And the new epidemic is also hurting public budgets.

The rising incidence of methamphetamine use will ultimately impact on health and police spending in this state, and they already take up the majority of the state’s resources.

And so a solution to the epidemic is in everybody’s interests.

The tragedy is that the reasons for drug use don’t change over the generations, even if the substance of choice does.

Ice use should not be considered a criminal issue but, rather, a social one.

Beating the problem will require working with individual users to learn why they feel the need to wreck themselves in the first place.

It won’t be a quick solution, nor a cheap solution, but it appears to be the only way to end this terrible epidemic.