This reach has ripped apart many families, at a huge societal cost, and has gone hand-in-hand with so much of the crime being perpetrated in our cities and towns.

Many of these stories were told when a Victorian parliamentary inquiry visited Wodonga a few years back.

The call of that time continues to be made now; that there needs to be real action on creating more rehabilitation beds in the Border and North East, as well as better, more targeted education.

Spend a day in any of our local courts and you will quickly realise the almost-incredible number of cases where the use of methamphetamine has played a pivotal role in an offence being committed.

We certainly all know that methamphetamine is wreaking considerable harm.

But now comes the revelation of an impact we might never before have realised.

It turns out that the Department of Health and Human Services has had to call in contractors to deal with the clean-up of another mess caused by these criminal dregs who profit from others’ misery.

The impact has come from the actual making of the drug, with considerable concern about the chemicals used in the process.

Two Wodonga properties, in Trudewind Road, have already had to be decontaminated as a result of the leftovers of methamphetamine production.

Until that is done, these properties simply cannot be used again.

When you consider the roll-call of the chemicals involved, it makes frightening sense.

These labs, authorities say, require corrosive chemicals including hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide and ammonia, and solvents including benzene and toluene.

This places even more importance on the importance of such a decontamination program and also the need to do everything we can as a community to reduce the use of methamphetamine.