The Real History of Illegal Drugs: MDMA

[SteamboatBillJr]

The Real History of Illegal Drugs: MDMA

MDMA is a drug with serious potential. Developed in the late 1970s, it's long been considered a party drug, but we've only scratched the surface of talking about its use for therapeutic purposes.



[video=youtube_share;-ambhaX86cc]http://youtu.be/-ambhaX86cc[/video]

http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/real-history-drugs-educates-millions

 

[SteamboatBillJr]

The video states:

The DEA [argued]: MDMA should be classified as a schedule I drug for its high abuse potential, even without proof of harm.

In opposition: doctors, therapist, and religious leaders [contended] MDMA should be classified as a schedule III drug so that it [could] be prescribed by doctors and used in therapy.

But the federal government doubles down and makes MDMA illegal in the late 1980s.

I learned this is TRUE after doing fact checking. The DEA banned MDMA against the recommendations of medical experts and a federal judge.

...30 years ago, on July 1, 1985, that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) criminalized MDMA. After extensive legal hearings and testimony, the DEA administrator rejected the recommendation of DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young, who determined that it would be in the public interest for MDMA be placed in Schedule III rather than Schedule I in order to preserve its legal therapeutic use. As it turned out, this initial scheduling of MDMA was itself illegal and subsequently voided, since the Attorney General had failed to delegate the power to criminalize new drugs on an emergency basis to the DEA administrator.

It's now taken us 30 years since the summer of 1985, and about $5 million in donated funds, to get close to completing our international series of Phase 2 pilot studies of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. We confidently project it will be another six years—until 2021—before MDMA-assisted psychotherapy is legally available as a prescription treatment.
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more here


Could y'all believe this? At first, I couldn't believe the thing I had heard.

 

[Yeetbeat]

Not surprising in the slightest tbh.

 

[SteamboatBillJr]

I comprehend how this is not surprising. The government organizations responsible received enormous amounts of money as the result of prohibition. Asking those people if current drug policies should continue is the same as asking if they should keep the jobs they have. Tragically prohibition continuing resulted in mass incarceration, increased public harm, and those people making DARE adds keeping the jobs they had. Look at the results of legal MDMA assisted psychotherapy, none of the extreme adverse reactions mentioned on this forum occurred with pure MDMA within legal structure.

The people in the relevant organizations were public servants and requesting those people serve the public at the expense of the jobs they had got the expected results. Prohibition expanded. Buried in the middle of this was the cost, the perpetual expansion of oppressive policies impeding basic human rights.

I recognize that people are greedy and obviously those peoples actions were wrong. As you said this is not surprising. This makes me want evidence I could be different in the same situation. I am thinking we can't all be that way. Great public servants exist and LEAP proves this. You say peoples flaws were not surprising, perhaps. A few people in the relevant organizations honored the responsibility they were entrusted with enough they'd support making themselves obsolete. In the end I expect history should remember a few admirable individuals much differently than the majority in those organizations.