Ecstasy
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So Many Choices
A close-up of Ecstasy pills in assorted shapes and colors. MDMA, (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), AKA ecstasy, is a synthetic drug that is chemically similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. Taken orally in tablet or capsule form, MDMA effects brain cells’ utilization of serotonin, a chemical transmitter that plays an important role in regulating mood, aggression, sexual activity, sleep and sensitivity to pain. MDMA has a similar chemical structure to serotonin, and when it enters brain cells, it causes an excessive release of that chemical. As a result, users experience feelings of increased energy, euphoria, emotional warmth, and distortions in time, perception, and tactile experience.
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Baggies Full of MDMA
MDMA tablets in baggies among other drugs. MDMA was developed in Germany in the early 1900s as an intermediate stage compound that could be used to synthesize other pharmaceuticals. During the 1970s, however, some psychiatrists began using MDMA as a psychotherapeutic tool, even though at the time it had not yet undergone any clinical trials or been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in humans. Nevertheless, it gained a small following among mental health practitioners, some of whom called it “penicillin for the soul” because it seemed to enhance communication in therapy and help patients to achieve insights.
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Doling Out Drugs
The sharing of MDMA, AKA ecstasy, tablets by users. About the same time that psychotherapists began their unsanctioned experiments with MDMA in the 1970s and early 1980s, the drug also began to show up in the street. Ecstasy initially was popular primarily among white adolescents and young adults in the nightclub scene, particularly among participants in dance parties known as raves, where DJs played techno, trance, and other forms of electronic dance music, and utilized light shows and smoke machines to create a dreamy, psychedelic atmosphere. Dancers sometimes took MDMA to augment the experience at a rave. Since then, the drug has spread to other ethnic and demographic groups.
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Handful of Molly
MDMA (ecstasy) tablets in hand. Many users, especially young whites in the club scene, prefer to snort a powder made from the pills. The street name for this is 'molly' and once ingested it takes about 25-90 minutes to take effect or 'come up.' In the inner city, MDMA users still tend to ingest the pills orally, though they also will combine the powder with marijuana and smoke the mixture. Another new variation is combining MDMA with harder drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, or even heroin. These hybrid highs go by various names, including “e-pills,” “thizzies,” and “smackers.”
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Rare Tree Oil
Sassafras oil, the base chemical for ecstasy, is poured into a bowl. Over 200 rare Sassafras trees have been felled to create this oil. The environmental website Tree Hugger reported in 2009 that illicit logging to produce oil for MDMA is endangering the increasingly rare Mreah Prew Phnom tree (Cinnamomum parathenoxylon), which is found in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia. Cambodian officials said that poachers were chopping their roots into small blocks and shredding them to create a pulp that they cooked in large metal vats for five days. The illegal Sassafras oil distilleries required the poachers to cut down large amounts of other trees for firewood, and also leached distilled oil into nearby streams, which often were filled with dead fish and frogs as a result.
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Strong Armed Enforcers
Local law enforcement in Cambodia with a machine gun. A New Zealand newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, reported in 2009 that Cambodian authorities, with help from Australian police, planned to destroy 14 tons of confiscated sassafras oil. The oil was made from increasingly rare Mreah Prew Phnom tree (Cinnamomum parathenoxylon), which is found in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia. "Without the right measures, they would all be destroyed," said Meas Vyrith, a deputy secretary-general of Cambodia's anti-drug committee. Though Cambodian officials have destroyed dozens of tons of illegally harvested and distilled sassafras oil in recent years, illegal logging continues to threaten the fragile forests.
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Sniffing Out the Stash
A sniffer dog on the hunt for the Canada Border Service Agency. Recently released Australian law enforcement data calls into question the dogs’ prowess at ferreting out suspects with drugs in their possession. In 80 percent of the more than 14,000 searches conducted after a dog indicated the presence of drugs, no drugs were found. Additionally, a 2009 study by an Australian university researcher found that the majority of MDMA users were undeterred by the use of drug detection dogs by police, even though a majority of them had come in contact with the dogs in the previous six months. Users simply became more adept at concealing their drugs when they were carrying them in public places, the study found.
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Oil Pot is Over
Rangers and conservationists destroy a sassafras oil pot in South Western Cambodia, in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, supports more than 80 of the world's most threatened species including Asian elephants, Indochinese tiger and Siamese crocodiles. Over 250 acres of this pristine forest are cleared each year by illegal distilling operations, which cut down from increasingly rare Mreah Prew Phnom tree (Cinnamomum parathenoxylon) for its roots. Authorities believe the same international criminal syndicates involved in production of the oil for making MDMA also are involved in wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, drug smuggling and illegal weapons trading.
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Tree Tripping
Looking up at a rare Mreah Prew Phnom tree (Cinnamomum parathenoxylon), which is found in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary in Cambodia. The tree often is felled illegally so that the roots can be chopped up and distilled into sassafras oil, a precursor for making MDMA, or ecstasy. (The oil also is used in the manufacture of cosmetics.) The sanctuary, one of the few wilderness refuges in southeast Asia, is critical to the survival of Asian tigers and elephants, and officials say that MDMA users are helping to drive these animals to extinction by giving criminals an incentive to destroy forests to produce the oil.
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Nosing Out the Drugs
A dog sniffs cargo for drugs with a Canada Border Services Agent. Use of MDMA seems to be broadening to include younger and younger users. In the U.S., the National Institute on Drug Abuse found that between 2001 and 2005, annual ecstasy use decreased by 52 percent in eighth graders, 58 percent in 10th graders, and 67 percent in 12th graders. Rates of lifetime MDMA use decreased significantly from 2004 to 2005 among 12th graders. The survey also found in 2005 that eighth graders were less likely to view occasional MDMA use as a potentially harmful problem. Among high-school seniors, 3.9 percent of white students admit to using MDMA, while three percent of Hispanics and 1.4 percent of African-American students used it.
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Miami Nightclub
A mirror ball at a nightclub in Miami. The devices, which reflect lights and create geometric patterns on dance floors, harken back to the 1970s disco era, when champagne and cocaine snorted in nightclub bathrooms helped fuel nights on the town. Today, the music is different, and the party drug of choice for young dancers is MDMA, which some say produces a euphoric feeling of connectedness to others in the crowd. But just as cocaine abuse produced its share of health emergencies, hospitalizations and deaths, MDMA endangers the health of those who are out for a good time.
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Lights Flashing
Emergency lights are flashing while this ambulance goes on a call. A 2003 article published in Annals of Emergency Medicine documented how MDMA abuse can trigger heart attacks. The case report described a 27-year-old man who sought emergency treatment after taking half a tablet of MDMA, along with drinking a bottle of whiskey, and then suffering chest tightness and discomfort for several hours. Doctors found that he had suffered an acute myocardial infarction. A 2008 study of people who died after using MDMA found that the drug interferes with the body’s ability to self-regulate its temperature. In some cases, ecstasy caused users’ temperature to rise as much as five degrees Celsius above its normal reading of 37 degrees C, which led to severe brain damage.
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It's an Emergency
Miami Fire/Rescue Ambulances arrive back at the hospital. A 2010 British study, which reviewed stimulant-related deaths in the UK, found an alarming recent rise in death rates among young MDMA users. Between 2001 and 2007, MDMA users accounted for 42 percent of all stimulant deaths. The researchers, however, were even more concerned because the MDMA fatalities typically were young, otherwise healthy individuals. Other studies have linked MDMA to heart attacks, dangerous increases in body temperature, and the possibility of structural brain damage in long-term users. A 2006 study published in the Journal of Pharmacology, for example, found that subjects who took MDMA and similar drugs experienced a prolonged increase in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, accompanied by bradycardia, or an abnormally slow heartbeat.
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Forest Fire
Smoke emitting from a Cambodian rainforest fire. The sassafras oil distilled from endangered trees in Cambodia is 90 percent pure, the highest quality available to illicit MDMA manufacturers. The market for MDMA in the United States and other developed countries is so lucrative—a pill that costs 25 cents to produce can be sold for $20 to $30 at a rave—that criminals are willing to hike deep into the rainforest to cut down the trees and process their roots to produce the oil, and then to smuggle the oil to the labs in western Europe that are the main source of MDMA for the U.S. market.
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Ecstasy Effects
City of Miami Fire Rescue Paramedics treat an ecstasy user suffering a panic attack after he took two ecstasy pills at a Miami rave.. In addition to altering serotonin levels, MDMA also can cause a potentially problematic increase in both heart rate and blood pressure, and after the initial euphoric experience, users may have lingering feelings of confusion, depression and anxiety, and suffer from sleep disturbances as well.
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Drug Money
Drug money being counted by an electronic counter. According to the U.S. government, MDMA sold in the U.S. is manufactured mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium, although clandestine labs have been discovered in the U.S. and Canada as well. The European-made MDMA is smuggled into the U.S. by Israeli, Russian and western European drug-trafficking organizations, often by couriers who travel on commercial airlines and by the use of express package carriers. It costs as little as 25 cents to manufacture tablets containing between 70 and 120 milligrams of MDMA , which then can be sold in the U.S. for $20 to $30 apiece. A 2000 seizure in Los Angeles of a shipment of approximately 2.1 million tablets—with a street value of more than $50 million—shows the scale of MDMA trafficking.
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Drug Destroyers
Cambodian law enforcement officers destroy an illicit MDMA production center. In 2009, after a ranger team from the Cambodian Ministry and Environment discovered ecstasy distilling facilities during a routine foot patrol through the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, aerial surveillance and further patrols uncovered an extensive network of the labs. A antidrug task force was sent deep into the jungle to root out the operation. They used landmines provided by the Cambodian military to blow up the ecstasy labs and distillation equipment used to produce the sassafras oil from which MDMA is made.
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Colorful Clubbing
A 'clubber' dances in a nightclub while a light show goes on behind him. In Scotland, according to recently declassified government documents, officials became so alarmed about an apparent boom in MDMA use in the 1990s that they considered authorizing a study in which urine samples would be obtained from people who attended raves, so that they could be tested for traces of the drug. In addition, officials considered giving volunteers legal dispensation to attend raves and purchase samples of MDMA for testing in government labs, so that government agencies could monitor the trend. The plan for the investigation of raves was abandoned after advisors decided that backfire and result in political problems for the government.
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A Feeling of Ecstasy
Sue Stevens lies in a bed while she undergoes MDMA therapy. Administered by an experienced MDMA therapist, MDMA induces an inner calm that enables patients to confront memories and emotions that are otherwise too painful to deal with. None of the other forms of usual therapy have aided Sue in overcoming the suicide of her sister. Before it became a popular party drug, MDMA was utilized in unauthorized experiments by psychotherapists who thought it would help patients to have breakthrough insights, and recent authorized studies suggest that MDMA, when used in a controlled, clinical manner, may have potential to help patients struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and from dysfunctional social skills.
