Figures from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) reveal the number of arrests for amphetamine use and possession in Moree has jumped 600 per cent in the past decade.

Syringes have become a common sight in Moree, with council workers collecting 200 syringes from parks each month before yellow disposal bins were installed recently.

Experts say efforts to tackle the problem are being crippled by an absence of services.

Moree elder Pauline Briggs, who helped to establish the now-defunct Roy Thorne House Substance Misuse Rehabilitation Centre, said she picks up three or four needles outside her house every day.

“Ice is like the evil claw and it’s just taken a grip on Moree,” Ms Briggs’ granddaughter Nari Kay said.

Local resident Kerry Cassells said a legal injecting centre would dramatically reduce the number of syringes on the streets of the town.

“This issue is never going to go away, so we should be getting these troubled people to inject in a place where they are supervised,” she said.

“Maybe, just maybe, one of the users will say enough is enough I don’t want this life anymore because it is destroying me, my family, my children and whoever else they are close to.”

Bronwyn Briggs, harm minimisation project officer for the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council, said towns like Moree despaired at curbing the ice scourge.

“We’re probably in the critical stages and we’re just trying to get an understanding of what our understanding is,” she said. 

“In places like Moree, where they’ve seen the Roy Thorne centre close down, I don’t think they know what to do.”

Tamworth is also in the grip of an “ice storm”, according to those on the front line.

“The number of people we’re seeing affected by ice is certainly rising,” Tamworth regional ambulance inspector Ray Tait said.

ABC current affairs program Four Corners will tonight feature a story on the spread of ice in rural and regional Australia.

Arrests for amphetamine possession outside Sydney have increased at more than double the rate of Sydney, data provided to Fairfax Media reveals.

And arrest data is the tip of the iceberg, NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research director Don Weatherburn said.

“At this early stage of the epidemic, there wouldn’t be large numbers going to emergency departments or coming to the attention of police because most people seem to be recreational users that aren’t in serious trouble yet,” he said.

Moree police commander Gelina Talbot said Moree’s experience was “no different to any other town or city in NSW”.

Earlier his year, police undertook a large-scale operation to bust a supply ring in Armidale.

But the services available to help ice users were next to nil Rebecca McKetin, a fellow at the Centre for Research on Ageing Health and Wellbeing, said. Heroin addiction can be treated with methadone but there is no equivalent for ice.

“In small towns you might have 10 beds (for rehabilitation) so if there is a sudden expansion it’s very difficult to deal with,” she said.

The number of drug labs in NSW has doubled in five years and increasingly they are being discovered in regional towns.

The Australian Crime Commission said the resurgence of methamphetamine is their “highest priority” because it poses the “highest risk to the Australian community of all illicit drug and organised crime markets”.