LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The violence associated with the use of the drug ice and its epidemic spread has been the focus of a national taskforce. A radical proposal's being hatched. 7.30 has learned of plans for Australia's first so-called ice room, a medically-supervised facility that ice smokers can use to get high. Reporter Andy Park has followed the proposal's key backers, who say they'll risk arrest to see an ice room established.

CAMERON BEAL, ONE80TC ATTENDEE: The point where I knew I was addicted was obviously wanting it every day, going to work and obviously being high on ice. I lied to my family pretty much through my whole ice addiction. And once they virtually found out why I looked so bad and stuff, they were very broken. They found out I was actually on the ice.

ANDY PARK, REPORTER: Cameron Beal is halfway through his court-ordered rehab at ONE80TC, a faith-based rehab centre in Sydney's west.

ONE80TC COUNSELLOR: How many of you used ice in your addiction?

(Several men raise hands)

ONE80TC ATTENDEE: There comes a point when your brain's just friend.

ONE80TC EMPLOYEE: In this program here, the men come in from all walks of life. Age specific 18 to 35 are probably the largest in Western Sydney hands down.

ANDY PARK: Here, the philosophy is strict and total abstinence.

ONE80TC EMPLOYEE: Well the only way into recovery for us is to be detoxed and to start having the chemicals out of your system.

ANDY PARK: One of Australia's most respected drug experts, Dr Alex Wodak, has come to the Swiss city of Bern to visit the world's first drug consumption room, set up here 30 years ago. He believes there's a better way to get people into treatment by allowing them to keep smoking.

DRUG CONSUMPTION ROOM EMPLOYEE: A big population of people started smoking from the hip-hop scene and from the techno scene. They said, "We are not junkies. We don't shoot."

ALEX WODAK, AUST. DRUGS LAW REFORM FOUNDATION: So this is chasing the dragon?

DRUG CONSUMPTION ROOM EMPLOYEE: Exactly.

ANDY PARK: The rise of hard drug smoking is being fought here using a new annex to the city's supervised drug injection room, a radical approach which Dr Wodak hopes to export back to Australia.

DRUG CONSUMPTION ROOM EMPLOYEE: This is the injection room. We have six places to inject and this is the smoking room. So we got glasses, we got (inaudible) and we have the big, big, big, big air-condition system.

ALEX WODAK: We are set in the 1980s way of thinking and the rest of the world is moving on. We need inhalation rooms in Australia for the same reason that the Europeans do and that is that people are shifting from injecting drugs in Australia to injecting, but also now inhaling.

ANDY PARK: In the German city of Frankfurt, the inhalation room is at capacity today, with clients smoking cocaine and heroin under supervision.

MATT NOFFS, AUTHOR: Walking into those drug consumption rooms in Europe, I felt that what I had previously thought was a radical idea was actually commonplace. So, it felt to me that when we got back here, we had to begin immediately.

ANDY PARK: Dr Wodak's partner in the plan for Australia's first ice room is Matt Noffs. They are now actively looking at ways of providing the same facility here, starting with a way to clean toxic air.

ALEX WODAK: Is it gonna take two years, five years, 10 years to deliver the product or are we gonna be able to get this this year?

MANUFACTURER: No, no, no. You know, the time to actually manufacture fans and filtration systems is really in terms of weeks and not months.

ANDY PARK: The idea is not without support amongst the police community.

MICK PALMER, FORMER AFP COMMISSIONER: There's a wide recognition among law enforcement colleagues, including young officers as well as more experienced ones, that the current arrangements we have in place aren't achieving the outcomes we would like to achieve, that in many ways it's badly broken.

ANDY PARK: Today, Matt Noffs is taking the case directly to police officials from around the country.

MATT NOFFS: We need police on side.

ANDY PARK: His book, Breaking the Ice, outlines just how an ice inhalation room would work.

MATT NOFFS: I think Western Sydney is definitely a place - like Liverpool would be a really important place for one of these centres.

ANDY PARK: But residents in Liverpool are so far unconvinced.

HARRY HUNT, LIVERPOOL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: Having a ice room in Liverpool is going to project an image of Liverpool is a drug capital of the south-west. We don't want that sort of image.

MICK PALMER: All the medical evidence that I understand, the research evidence is that less than something like 20, 23 per cent of people who take crystal methamphetamines have psychosis episodes. Not all of those are violent.

ANDY PARK: The Kings Cross injection room has already been supervising ice users who inject.

ROBERT GRAHAM, UNITING MEDICALLY SUPERVISED INJECTING CENTRE: Over the last 15 years we have had a steady proportion, between 10 and 20 per cent of people, using methamphetamine by injection, and yet the staff have never encountered a single episode of sustained violence or aggression that they can't simply talk down.

ANDY PARK: The overseas experience has not come without violence, or at least the need for ways to cope with it.

ALEX WODAK: Is it a big problem or a small problem?

DRUG CONSUMPTION ROOM EMPLOYEE II: It is a problem. I won't say it is a big problem, but we have people who are not allowed to come here again because of violence.

ANDY PARK: The NSW Government told 7.30 that they won't back any plans for an ice inhalation room.

MATT NOFFS: If we don't get permission and the community knows that we have the evidence to do this, we're gonna do it anyway.

ANDY PARK: Even if you get arrested?

ALEX WODAK: We'd much prefer it if the authorities would give us permission to do that. If they don't, we would still like to go ahead.

ANDY PARK: The challenge might be getting users to take to the idea in the first place.

CAMERON BEAL: No, I wouldn't use a service like that at all. I would - if anything, I'd be hidden away smoking it in my own little police, you know what I mean?, away from everybody.

ONE80TC EMPLOYEE: Could be anywhere in the country and relapse. They're not gonna say, "I'll put my hand up. I'm gonna travel to Sydney now and go to that medically-supervised place I can smoke ice." That's never gonna happen. That's a furphy.

MATT NOFFS: We should keep them inhaling, if they're gonna continue to use the drug, as opposed to letting them shift to injecting.

ANDY PARK: You realise a lot of Australians might go, "You want to keep kids inhaling ice?"

MATT NOFFS: Mmm.

ANDY PARK: That's a very controversial idea.

MATT NOFFS: First task of course is to help someone away from a dependency. Of course, always. But to be realistic, if we know that someone's gonna continue to be dependent on a drug, you absolutely would rather them inhale than inject.

LEIGH SALES: That story from Andy Park.