He paints a disturbing picture in which emergency service personnel are often placed in danger from people they are trying to help.

“There has been an increase in drugs as a whole but over the last few years there has been a marked increase in ice use,” he said.

“It is a lot more dangerous for paramedics than it used to be.

“That is not just necessarily attributed to ice – ice users often use other drugs, prescription drugs, heroin and when you throw the whole lot on board, you have a potentially very violent person.

“In the past, one or two jobs a day with mental health patients or drug affected patients wasn’t uncommon. 

“Now we see at least five or six jobs a day. I’ve done whole shifts which have been dealing with mental health patients, not necessarily attributed to drugs but in many cases they are.

“We face physical assault and verbal assault – it’s not uncommon.

“I’m a big guy, six foot four, and it’s not uncommon to have someone swing punches at me. That can be from a teenager who is five foot nothing yet believes they are bigger than me and can take me on.

“We need to make them safe. If that means taking away their liberty, we do it to protect ourselves. If we have to restrain them physically and chemically to protect them from injuring themselves and us, we do it.

“If we require police to assist us to restrain people to get them treatment, we do it.

“On a daily basis we will stand off at a property because there are warnings and wait for the police to arrive.”

He said the impact was not just on paramedics.

“If we are called to a job and the ambulance call taker hears violence in the background or the caller themselves is carrying on we will stand off and wait for police to arrive,” he said.

“We won’t walk into a violent situation. We don’t have the Tasers, the guns. We are there to help people but we are not prepared to put ourselves in danger. Once we are injured, who can we call?

“So they tie up other resources, like the police, as well as ambulance.

“It has a snowball effect because when we get them to hospital we tie up the same resources.

“Small rural hospitals don’t have the available resources to deal with ice.

“So then we have hospital staff who face the violence we have to, out on the streets.

“And while we are dealing with these people – drug users and mental health patients, it takes us away from our core business of helping people. We are unable to attend the jobs for the mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers who need us, who are having heart attacks or strokes. Those who need us at that point of time to save their lives.

“Drug users don’t need that help to save their lives at that point in time – certainly they need help but there are other people out there we can’t get to that need us to save their lives.

“We are between a rock and a hard place.”

He said disturbingly he had heard ice is in local schools.

“To the kids here I say don’t use it. Don’t touch it. Run from it. If you have friends using get help. Getting help for them is one of the best things you can do,” he said.

“I urge everyone to look up the pictures on social media, mainly US ice users, and see the way they physically change – the weight loss, they pick at their faces and skin, as they think they have bugs crawling out of their skin. They have scabby arms, scabby faces.

“We are seeing that now in this community and it’s a shame as these people are long-term users.”