Regular users of the drug ice have more than doubled in four years, placing acute pressure on treatment services across the country.
More than one in 100 people are addicted to the drug and one in 50 are regular monthly users, according to the first quantification of the nation's serious ice user population.
Yet frontline workers say federal funding from the National Ice Taskforce is enough to cover "about a quarter of a staff member" for each treatment service.  
Using data from hospitals and treatment services, a group of researchers led by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, estimated 268,000 people aged 15-54, or 2.09 per cent of the population, use ice at least monthly.
Alarmingly, the highest rate of use and the steepest increase has been among young people, the study, to be published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday, found.
The number of 15-24 year old's addicted to ice has tripled in four years to 1.14 per cent of the population.
"The increased number of problem methamphetamine users indicates a need to expand services to redress the health problems associated with regular use," the authors concluded.
Jack Nagle, who was addicted to ice for a year, said the horror news stories and ad campaigns don't affect curious young people.
"It's almost like a trick at first, you see all this terrible stuff that happens to people on the news but when you first take it, it's fantastic, it's actually quite fun" said the 25-year-old.
"You don't initially have those catastrophic consequences and it's a really social drug but it turns on its heels very quickly. By the time it does, it's hard to get out."
Mr Nagle was 19 and into basketball, partying and drinking when he first tried it with a friend in a car outside a Melbourne pub. It was much cheaper than speed and gave him a bigger high.
Social use at parties - along with cannabis, alcohol and speed - then spiralled to the point where he committed petty crime to fund a week-long binge that cost $7500 and left him in a psychosis.
After hitting rock bottom, he knocked on his mother's door for help. He had a year of residential treatment and now works for a Melbourne rehab service, Refocus. 
"I guess I wanted help for a long time but I wasn't sure how to ask for it," he said. "I was lucky I got put into treatment straight away."
Ted Noffs Foundation chief executive Matt Noffs, who runs the only service in Australia that caters to ice addicts as young as 13, said options for young people were woefully inadequate. 
He said the government's $250 million for treatment will be split among 30 regions, allowing enough to fund less than a quarter of a staff member if money was distributed equally to every service.
"If we're not treating this earlier, then you create a generation who are dependent for life," he said.
"The money isn't enough, it's late in the piece, knowing where we are with ice, and youth support should be the priority."
In its report in   December, the taskforce found the price of ice has stayed low, while purity and availability has increased.
Led by former Victorian police commissioner Ken Lay, the taskforce acknowledged the largest gains to be made in solving the ice epidemic will come from prevention and early intervention.
???A spokesman for NSW Assistant Health Minister, Pru Goward, said the government had partnered with NGOs to fund new treatment services across the state, including Dubbo, Wollongong, Mt Druitt, Lismore, Newcastle and St Vincent's Hospital.