Ice is streaming into Australia at an alarming rate with border detections of the destructive drug increasing almost 10 fold.
Between 2011 and 2014, detections of amphetamine-type substances - including ice - on a commercial scale skyrocketed from 44 to 415.
A single importation of 849kg of ice was seized in a $1.5 billion haul in Sydney last year. However, a commercial quantity can be any amount more than a kilogram.
Over the past three years, the total number of crystal meth busts made by customs officers has jumped from 171 to 1379, according to the service's annual report.
Police are under no illusion about the destruction caused by the drugs that slip through undetected and end up in the hands of addicts.
Ed Daley was one of them.
The father-of-two became hooked after using ice with mates in 2005.
For the next near-decade Mr Daley battled crippling drug abuse and a damaging gambling addiction.
"It has destroyed me, it's had me in depression for so long," he told AAP.
It was never difficult to buy a hit, Mr Daley said, and on some days he would blow up to $600.
Mr Daley has spent the past 15 weeks at The Glen Drug and Alcohol Centre on the NSW Central Coast working on kicking his addiction.
The turning point was losing his father to liver disease from alcoholism.
"I promised him that if he got out of the hospital I would straighten myself out," he said.
"I've got my missus and my boys, I am doing it for myself and for them."
Before ice reaches people like Mr Daley, it passes through dirty backyard labs and the hands of multiple crooks.
"They are dens of filth that crooks set up as clandestine laboratories to do what they need to do to manufacture whatever they can," NSW Drug Squad Superintendent Tony Cooke said.
"Ice, we know it's horribly addictive.
"We have seen kids use it that say `I used this once and I would've hurt my mother to get money to buy it'."
The drug squad is particularly focused on the diversion of chemical precursors to make drugs in these backyard dens.
In December police uncovered more than 30kg of ice and thousands of litres of chemicals in Kenthurst, which were allegedly linked to Comancheros bikies.
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