Beware “Extreme Ecstasy”

This poorly written article got a Drudge link a few days into the new year. This extreme version of Ecstasy is MDMA cut with methamphetamine. This has been occurring, to varying degrees, ever since Ecstasy was made illegal. MDMA was first synthesized in 1912, saw minor recreational use in the 1960s, was used by some mental health professionals for therapeutic purposes starting in the 1970s, then became popular around Dallas – especially in gay clubs – in the early 1980s. Once the gays get hold of something, it has to go – MDMA was classified Schedule I in the U.S. in 1985.

MDMA isn’t perfectly safe, nor is it nearly as harmful everyone I know believes. It is more dangerous when cut with methamphetamine or other dangerous adulterants. Most of the danger associated with Ecstasy is due to its illegality. Recently, I saw someone sum up drug policy very succinctly: you can put the control of drugs in the hands of the government, private enterprise, or criminals. There is no other option. You cannot curb the demand for drugs, nor can you stop the supply. We know this because we have tried – really, really hard – to do both. By leaving drugs in the hands of criminals, we ensure huge profits for our enemies. Radicals in Afghanistan, paramilitary groups in South America, Mexican kingpins, etc. When we wage silent wars against production strongholds, the supply simply shifts to another area. Hundreds of billions of dollars don’t get left sitting on the table simply because the U.S. wills it so.

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From the article: “‘They (drug dealers) are remarketing and packaging it and trying to glamorize it,’ said Scott Burns, deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. ‘We just went through this issue with fentanyl. We learned a lot of things from that. We have to get on it early and get on it aggressively.’” Maybe drug dealers are trying to “glamorize” Ecstasy mixed with methamphetamine, I don’t know. What I do know is that the mix happens because pure MDMA is very expensive and methamphetamine is relatively cheap.

“Fentanyl is an opioid analgesic with a potency approximately eighty times that of morphine … [and] may be hundreds of times more potent than street heroin.” (Wiki). Medical use of fentanyl is through time-release patches. When used illicitly, it is shorter lasting, more addictive, and more dangerous than heroin, and allegedly does not produce the same euphoric high that heroin does. Why have there been ongoing problems with heroin getting cut with fentanyl? Take pure heroin, step on it multiple times, then add a dash of fentanyl to re-boost the potency so the users can’t tell the difference. This is pure economics of the illegal drug trade. Heroin users want pure heroin; they want the high that heroin produces. Suppliers and dealers want to maximize their profits. These two goals usually contradict one another.

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Recently there was a story about two accused criminals being held in an Illinois jail suing the state over the poor quality of the food served. You should have seen the internet outrage. They’re there to be punished! They’re there because we demand revenge! They should get gruel and be happy for it! Pay no attention to the fact that the lawsuit is being brought by individuals ACCUSED of committing a crime, not convicted. Despite what you may think, that is a position that any one of us could end up in for any number of reasons. Although most of the right wing believes so, concern over the humane treatment of prisoners is not some outrageous leftist-commie plot.

“Looking to the United States as a role model for drug control is like looking to apartheid-era South Africa for how to deal with race. The United States ranks first in the world in per capita incarceration — with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. The number of people locked up for U.S. drug-law violations has increased from roughly 50,000 in 1980 to almost 500,000 today; that’s more than the number of people Western Europe locks up for everything.” (From a recent article written by Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance)

Why should we care about them? They broke the law. They knew what they were doing. You do the crime, you do the time. Insert tough-on-crime cliche here. Felony conviction? No federal money for education for you, and just try to learn legitimate job skills in prison. No decent job for you when you get out – check that box and you’re done. No vote for you, so you can’t change the corrupt system that destroyed your life. No, how dare I say that… that person chose to sell and use drugs, they brought it all upon themselves.

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My sister is a public defender, and her current rotation in the system has her babysitting people arrested on drug charges. Presumably they’re in some sort of treatment-over-incarceration program. I talked to her early in the afternoon and asked, “Shouldn’t you be playing with your addicts right now?” “No, that part of the day is over. Now I just wait for them to call me to say they have to miss their court date because their babies’ mamas are in jail and they gotta take the 15 kids from the trailer park somewhere.” She probably has a different stance on drug policy than I do. There are the dregs of society, and drugs are often involved. Sometimes the drugs come first, sometimes later.

I live in an area where I never have to deal with these people. The addicts I’ve known have holed themselves up in their bedrooms constructing elaborate paranoid fantasies. They don’t get arrested when cops respond to a domestic dispute and find a meth lab. They don’t call the police to report that somebody broke in and stole their stash. I’ve known a couple guys popped for possession of under an ounce of marijuana: a class and community service, at worst.

I’m willing to concede that there exist violent, dangerous people who probably belong in jail. I accept that certain illegal drugs can exacerbate these traits. If drugs were legal, sentence the hell out of people who commit crimes while under the influence… provided we could trust the police not to sprinkle crack on minorities.

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Some of the most ardent drug warriors are those who have had close relationships with addicts. I would never support harm reduction if I saw what heroin did to your friend/relative/dog/dude who stole your TV for drug money. That damage occurred under the watch of the War on Drugs. Is it better that your friend is now a criminal instead of a public health issue? His dealer is a criminal too, doesn’t pay taxes, contributes nothing to society, and will end up as a $35,000/year tax liability if society has its way.

I can’t imagine a pharmacy with hard drugs sitting on the shelves, even though I think that’s a better solution than our current policy. It runs counter to everything I was taught growing up, and there isn’t a single country with drug policy that lax. I’m reminded of people who are against medical marijuana because they believe it’s a stepping stone to the legalization of the devil weed. Fear of an eventuality wholly unrelated to policy we know works shouldn’t keep us trapped in policy that doesn’t. Clean needles, methadone treatment. Treatment first, incarceration as a last resort. Sensible assessment of which drugs are truly dangerous and which are mostly dangerous due to being illegal.

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Not all drug dealers are violent. Some are. When money is tied to territory, and there is no legal means to protect it, violence is practically guaranteed. You either use violence to protect your turf, or someone else uses it to push you off. These dealers aren’t inherently violent; the culture of drugs demands it. Our drug policy leaves half of the population virtually unemployable in areas where jobs and legit opportunities are limited to begin with. Blame drugs for urban decay if you want, but it isn’t simply the use of drugs causing it. And on that note, there are still plenty of reasons to believe the CIA was partially responsible for the crack epidemic of the 1980s. Just because a story is swept under the rug doesn’t mean it’s a wacky conspiracy…

Goose Gossage, this year’s single inductee to the baseball Hall of Fame, said in a press conference that steroids weren’t around in his day – but if they had been, given the amount of money involved in the game, he couldn’t honestly say he wouldn’t have been tempted. If your options in life were limited to a McJob or the easy money that dealing can provide, wouldn’t enough of us be tempted?