It’s amazing that people who just took unknown drugs would have the clarity to be able to distinguish so accurately. But I think MDMA is probably a slightly easier thing to have an accurate awareness of than some other drugs. We talked to Jon Millward, the freelance data journalist who led the study and compiled the information, to explain the report further and to tell us what’s actually in your ecstasy. Very clean the whole time and no aftereffects except for some tiredness. In September last year, Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, warned the nitazenes were becoming increasingly common in Australia. Jennifer Schumann, head of the drug intelligence unit at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, said the detection of nitazene in the drug sold as MDMA was “very concerning”.
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Berlin’s first drug-checking service launched last year, and demand is high. Now the data is being shared with the KnowDrugs app, which informs users about the latest drug-checking results in Germany and beyond. PMA, which is often sold as ‘Super-Ecstasy’ though it is an entirely different drug, has been responsible for a number of deaths in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain over the past three years. It’s worth pointing out, though, that NSW drug prices suffer more price variance than any of the other states and territories.
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On the one hand, authorities justify their (ineffective) crackdowns on ecstasy by arguing that because MDMA is manufactured and distributed by the black market it must be terribly dangerous. People have died after taking what they thought or were told was MDMA. Because MDMA cannot be obtained legally, the black market manufactures the drug with unknown quality controls and expertise. Sometimes dangerous variants to MDMA (PMA or PMMA) contaminate the sold product – and these contaminants really are dangerous. By the 1990s, the drug became so popular it trailed only marijuana, cocaine and heroin among drug users — only to fade out, in part because of the pills’ dilution. Ecstasy (called “Molly,” “E” and the “hug drug”) is often laced with other drugs, sometimes deadly fentanyl.
- It’s actually very rare for someone to die from just taking MDMA.
- A total of 1,092 samples were analyzed in 2023, of which 494 (45.2%) were found to contain dangerously high concentrations of psychoactive agents, were contaminated with toxic substances or were falsely declared.
- “The demand for drug checking is significantly higher than the project’s counseling and analysis capacities,” he told DW.
- For years, festivals have been hotbeds of illegal drugs that put the lives of innocent children at risk.
- Current trials in the USA use MDMA to treat veterans with PTSD from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- No, people taking ecstasy are not taking stupid risks and they are definitely not playing Russian roulette – which carries a one in six chance of dying.
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Professor David Nutt, a distinguished expert, was sacked from an official UK position for estimating in 2009 that the risk of death was greater from horse riding than from taking ecstasy. From June to December 2023, 1,286 people requested the drug-checking service but 566 (44%) of them had to be turned away. A total of 1,092 samples were analyzed in 2023, of which 494 (45.2%) were found to contain dangerously high concentrations of psychoactive agents, were contaminated with toxic substances or were falsely declared. In some cases, for example, powder or crystals sold as MDMA, or ecstasy, were found to be ketamine.
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It was more likely an attempt to appeal to the retro-kitsch market popular among young people, she said. Hobdell was caught with 42 knotted plastic bags containing cocaine, and ecstasy tablets hidden in her waistband while McNicol had 143 Ecstasy tablets secreted in her vagina. She welcomes apps like KnowDrugs, and believes the drug-checking service in Berlin helps to make recreational drug use safer, while connecting people with health care professionals who can give them potentially life-saving advice. Its members were subsequently charged by the public prosecutor’s office with possession of illegal drugs. Although none of them were actually convicted, it took until 2016 for Berlin’s government, then a coalition of the center-left Social Democrats, Greens and the Left Party, to set its own drug-checking project in motion.
ABOUT PILLREPORTS
DrugsData, a project of Erowid Center, needs the support of professionals, students, parents, individuals with means, and small foundations for a total yearly budget of around $120,000 USD. Erowid Center’s general budget and the co-pays we require fund most of this cost. The recent tragic deaths of two young people after taking ecstasy at the Stereosonic music events in Sydney and Adelaide prompted much media comment.
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And unsurprisingly, SA is also the only state in the country where MDMA use is on the rise. ‘One is a purple pill with a Louis Vuitton logo and the other an orange pill with a crown logo. If these are in your possession, dispose immediately and if you see anyone with these alert a steward, police officer or security. So when they do actually get an MDMA pill, they might think that’s the one that’s a bit weird. But no, it’s very, very few that contain no active ingredients.
Then nothing really happens for 40 minutes or an hour when it should be coming on. So MDMA in its pure form is actually not that dangerous in low doses, certainly not compared to other drugs. “These dangerous pills risk the lives of many young Victorians. Taking even half of one of these ‘Red Bulls’ has been shown to put people in hospital,” the party’s drug harm reduction spokesperson, Aiv Puglielli said.
- Jennifer Schumann, head of the drug intelligence unit at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, said the detection of nitazene in the drug sold as MDMA was “very concerning”.
- The couple were caught after travelling to the popular event on August 25, 2023, by coach.
- And one thing he mentioned was that although drug kits seem to be a handy tool, a lot of festivals ban them simply because by admitting them would be acknowledging that there is drug use at their festival.Which is crazy.
- Two young Waterford men who died in Kinsale, Co Cork, in 2012 had both taken another form of the drug known as PMMA.
Earlier this year, rumors circulated that the highly potent opioid fentanyl had been found in party drugs in Berlin — fears that Drug-Checking Berlin was able to allay. Fentanyl was not found in over 1,000 samples analyzed in the capital, although it has been detected in heroin samples confiscated by police elsewhere in Germany. Kreicarek works closely with addiction counseling centers and the new Drug-Checking Berlin service, which notify him if there is a warning about a specific drug or batch of pills. That information is then issued to app users via push notification.
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However, at Chester Crown Court, both admitted possession of ketamine with intent to supply. She told officers she didn’t know what the drugs were but admitted she had bought them for personal use. The care support worker, from Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire, admitted to police she had tried to smuggle 64 tablets in by hiding them inside her body in the toys but was rumbled after sniffer dogs alerted security staff. Mother-of-four Sian Bullock smuggled more than 60 MDMA pills into the music festival inside Kinder eggs and was jailed for three years in May. ‘So let this be a warning, while a large majority of Creamfields festivalgoers are respectful, those smuggling drugs into the event will be charged and dealt with by the courts.
Gardai admitted they were worried that it was only a matter of time before they were dealing with a fatality due to ‘Casper’ or ‘Blue Ghost’ use. When the researchers did memory tests with Mr A, they concluded that he was suffering from “disorientation to time, poor concentration and short-term memory difficulties”. He had to repeat activities several times and “his concentration and attention were so impaired that he was unable to follow the sequence of the tasks required”. When he toned the weed down it “led to both the disappearance of his paranoid ideas and hallucinations and a reduction of his panic attacks”.
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Electric Zoo, for example, in the year following their tragedies, made all festival-goers watch this well-intentioned but ultimately confusing and much-derided PSA. The Victorian Greens have also renewed calls for pill testing at music festivals in response to the recent hospitalisations in NSW. Chris Gough, chief executive of the nation’s only pill testing venue in Canberra, said the detection of nitazenes in pills sold as MDMA showed the need for similar services in other states. People will continue to use drugs like ecstasy much like they continue to use alcohol. We have more chance of “nudging” people to less risky behaviours if the drug is even partly regulated. She said she doubted illegal drug manufacturers were actively trying to “entice children into a web of drug addiction”.
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“I think those kinds of overdoses can be prevented with honest information,” he told DW. “In general, I think knowledge about psychoactive substances allows people to make informed decisions and follow safer use practices which will help reduce harm.” “People may think that drugs like ecstasy are not dangerous, but that is far from the case, as a number of tragedies from the 1980s right up to the present time will show.” A number of red ecstasy pills embossed with “M5 Competition” had been tested by the Manchester Drug Analysis and Knowledge Exchange (MANDRAKE) and they were found to have the high dosages.
Getting official approval for medical research using MDMA has been impossible until recently. A 2007 study found that clinical studies established a link between the use of ecstasy and aggressive or violent behavior. Side effects can include irritability, insomnia, weight loss, hallucinations, seizures, hyperthermia and death, he said. “Long-term use can bring degeneration or toxicity of neurons in the brain as well as some cognitive deficiencies.”
