14 DAY TRIAL // Health experts in the UK are very much preoccupied with the fact that, according to recent data, the ecstasy currently available in the country is mind-bogglingly pure. In fact, they say that the drug is at its highest purity level in about 10 years.
What this means is that it contains a higher dose of its active ingredient, i.e. 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine or MDMA, than it used to. Specialists say that, contrary to what some might assume, this spells trouble.
Pure ecstasy is more dangerous than tainted one
According to Fiona Measham, a professor of criminology currently working with the UK's Durham University, the so-called acceptable dose of MDMA for an adult of average size is one of 70 to 75 milligrams per session, The Guardian reports.
Not too long ago, in 2009, the run-of-the-mill ecstasy pill available in the UK contained about 20 to 30 milligrams of MDMA. As a result, plenty of people got into the habit of taking two, maybe even three per session, just to make sure that they would feel something.
The problem is that the ecstasy pills currently marketed in this country now have an average MDMA concentration of roughly 100 milligrams. This means that people have higher chances to experience overheating, seizures and heart problems after experimenting with this drug.
“Our concern now is that people who over the years have been used to taking two or three tablets in a night might still do the same. With the purity, the results could be severe,” said Sacha Lord, who runs Manchester's Warehouse Project club, in a statement.
How did the drug get so pure?
Specialists suspect that ecstasy pills sold in the UK have ended up packing way more MDMA than what is considered to be safe because the people making them have turned to using other ingredients than the ones they relied on not too long ago.
It is believed that ecstasy manufacturers changed the recipe for their pills not so much because they wanted to offer their customers drugs of a better quality, but because authorities messed up their supply chain and forced them to seek other ingredients and novel ways to obtain them.
As Fiona Measham put it, “It’s like making a cake: there’s more than one ways to make one, you can use butter or margarine. But we don’t know for sure. Naturally, the industrial manufacture of class-A drugs is shrouded in mystery.”
Specialists ask that people who go clubbing and are exposed to this drug remember that purer ecstasy pills are by no means safer or better. On the contrary, their higher levels of MDMA make them more dangerous and more likely to cause all sorts of health trouble.
