The woman at the window is young, beautiful and heavily pregnant with her fifth child.

She’s also a heavy drug user, telling me through the fly-screen she smokes ice three or four times a day.

“I could stop using at any time. But right now, I'm not in that right place,” she says.

The 25-year-old, identified as “Penny”, is staying at a friend’s housing commission property, after being kicked out of her home.

Penny told A Current Affair that she uses 'ice' about four times a day. (9NEWS) (Nine)

“I was subjected to drugs many years of my life. I've seen my mum and my dad use. I was a heroin user for nine years,” Penny says, rolling a cigarette.

I ask what she’d say to those who’d be shocked at the thought of a heavily pregnant woman smoking ice and tobacco.

“I’ve lived a life that this is all I’ve known, this is all I’ve been shown,” she says.

“Like, some people…they’ve been brought up without drugs, without domestic violence, without people drinking every day. It's a completely different life.”

Penny is among many women choosing the destructive drug ice over their own children in the Victorian town of Morwell, an investigation for A Current Affair and 9news.com.au will reveal.

Watch the full story tonight on A Current Affair from 7pm

From grandmothers who admit to spending their pension on drugs instead of groceries for the grandchildren in their care, to mothers injecting ice with their daughters, it’s clear inter-generational drug dependency is an epidemic in this community.

Penny, who gives birth in April, says her father exposed her to drugs at a very young age.

The 25-year-old from Morwell in Victoria is about to have her fifth child at the age of just 25. (9NEWS) (Nine)

"I was first given morphine at the age of eight, for a headache,” she says.

“After that I couldn't sleep without Phenergan every night, and then it just becomes more and more and more. Then it turns to pot, then you turn to heroin and everything else and anything else.”

When I ask where her boyfriend is, Penny tells me he’s buying drugs.

A point (0.1g) of ice costs less than $50 in Morwell - cheaper than a slab of beer.

Coroners Court data shows the LaTrobe Valley has the second highest rate of fatal drug overdoses in regional Victoria - with significantly more deaths per capita than the state average.

There are no residential and withdrawal centres in Gippsland, and addicts who want help must find their own way to Melbourne.

Penny says she wants to break the cycle of drug abuse that is rampant in her town. (9NEWS) (Nine)

“We need more support services that can help people in the community get off drugs and when they want to do it,” Penny says.

Penny suggests that it’s easy to dodge regular DHS drug screens, which at-risk parents have two days to complete.

“People that know ways around it, they can have the drug out of the system within that 48 hours.”

Psychologist Stefan Gruenert, from substance abuse treatment service Odyssey House Victoria, says drug use becomes such a normal part of daily functioning for some people, they can’t survive without it.

“It’s often intergenerational – parents have been using alcohol or heroin or drugs pretty heavily, their children grow up in that environment,” he says.

“Where there’s poverty, there’s families that haven’t been employed across generations and they don’t know what it’s like to go to work.

Morwell is located in regional Victoria to the east of Melbourne. (9NEWS) (Nine)

“Of course they feel shameful and they feel the great stigma about using the drugs, particularly if they’re pregnant at that time.

“Sometimes that shame just keeps them turning to drugs to try and feel good for a few moments.”

Penny didn’t use drugs during her first two pregnancies, but regularly injected heroin during her third and fourth.

“By the time my fourth (child) was born, he was addicted to heroin and methadone,” she says.

“They had to put him on morphine, and that’s not something you want to see your newborn baby go through."

For the first time during my afternoon with Penny, she starts to cry.

“I don’t want this life for the rest of my life,” she says, as her toddler screams behind her in the lounge room.

Psychologist Stefan Gruenert says drug habits were intergenerational with parents developing children who became drug users themselves. (9NEWS) (Nine)

“I’ve been doing this for so many years, and I’m just sick of it.”