An Education Pill

For today’s installment of As The Drug War Continues To Suck, we look at methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), better known as Ecstasy, the “Disco Biscuit”, the “hug bug”, or simply “e”.

1. The first thing you should know is that most, if not all, of the conventional wisdom on MDMA is wrong. I know that I grew up hearing the statistics that one night of using MDMA could be lethal. Well, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine study that legend is based on? It’s a crock of crap. Instead of giving primates a pill of MDMA, the doctor injected them with overdose levels of methamphetamines. Two of the monkeys died, natch, and the medical community therefore, in a moment of the most blissful disconnection, proclaimed MDMA a lethal drug. Federal government ineptitude fever- catch it!

2. Pushed by one the most anti-freedom drug warriors in the U.S. government’s history, then Senator Joseph Biden, the Reducing American’s Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act (yes, the RAVE act, groan), which was targeted at MDMA use, eventually made its way into law as an attachment to the Amber’s Law bill. It has had a dramatic effect on freedom of assembly, since the bill allows for police to investigate parties where the notorious drug gear of “bottled water and glow sticks” are present.

Note, for all of my pro-drug Democrats, the roster of co-sponsors to the bill: 15 out of 17 are from the DNC.

3. The truth about MDMA? It’s been found to be beneficial to the emotionally distressed, people like veterans suffering from PTSD. Doctors and psychiatrists who partake of it consider it a “low-calorie martini” and “penicillin for the soul”.

4. It’s reputation as a aphrodisiac, “love drug”, or rape drug is vastly overblown. For every one person you find who describes ecstasy as a “six-hour orgasm”, you will find 20 who find it more of an emotional enhancer than a hormonal/physical enhancer.

Eisner quotes a distributor who claimed to have originated the name Ecstasy. He said he picked it "because it would sell better than calling it 'Empathy.' 'Empathy' would be more appropriate, but how many people know what it means?"

5. I’ll close with an editorial from New Scientist, hardly a cabal of tripped out rave-heads and Grateful Dead fans:

“IMAGINE you are seated at a table with two bowls in front of you. One contains peanuts, the other tablets of the illegal recreational drug MDMA (ecstasy). A stranger joins you, and you have to decide whether to give them a peanut or a pill. Which is safest?

You should give them ecstasy, of course. A much larger percentage of people suffer a fatal acute reaction to peanuts than to MDMA…

…This is a worldwide problem. We need a rational debate about the true damage caused by illegal drugs - which pales into insignificance compared with the havoc wreaked by legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. Until then, we have no chance of developing a rational drug policy.”

Consider yourself educated.

Next time someone brings up the “hard” drugs like ecstasy, perhaps you can pass on the light of knowledge to him. Who knows? Maybe by the time I’m 50 we'll unwad our collective Puritanism Panties and legalize the imminently safe drug, MDMA.