ACMD call for Ecstasy downgrade

Jock — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:31:35 +0000

It's an interesting day from drugs policy news. Here's another one:

Someone at the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is suggesting the reclassification of ecstasy and LSD from class A to class B. They also want to...

...examine whether more could be done to reduce the harm caused by the drug, which is taken by an estimated 500,000 people a week.

I can tell them how to do that of course: legalize it. Allow the brewers and pharmcos to sell it, regulated and safety tested. The very fact that it is estimated that half a million people a week take it and there are so very few medical incidents involving ecstasy is already proof that it's nowhere near as dangerous as, say, alcohol use, short or long term.

The biggest problem with ecstasy is that nobody actually knows what they are taking. Because it's criminal, and especially since it's not so lucrative as it once was, it's cut with all sorts of things of which the user has no knowledge and certainly no control. That's the real danger. That and the urban myths about how to behave while you're on it - you know, the sort of misinformation that killed Leah Betts (can any one reading this name anyone else who has allegedly died of ecstasy by the way?)

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ACMD call for Ecstasy downgrade