it is pretty scary, if eccies were allowed to be made and produced by clean, licensed labs, and sold in chemists, like pharmaceuticals are this would not happen. xtc is too hit and miss these days, people have to understand this, but it is hard when there was 10 or 15 years or so (in our scene in Aus) when there were no deaths from pma pills and some people still chase that high or feeling and will buy and eat any pill with colouring and a logo stamped on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-methoxyamphetamine
para-Methoxyamphetamine (PMA; "Death", "Dr. Death", "Chicken Powder", "Chicken Yellow"), also known as 4-methoxyamphetamine (4-MA), is a serotonergic drug of the amphetamine class.[1][2] Unlike other similar drugs of this family, PMA does not produce stimulant, euphoriant, or entactogen effects,[3] and behaves more like an antidepressant in comparison,[citation needed] though it does have some psychedelic properties.[4][5]
PMA has been occasionally found in tablets labeled as MDMA (colloquially known as "ecstasy"), although its effects are markedly different compared to those of MDMA. PMA is commonly synthesized from anethole, the flavor compound of anise and fennel, mainly because the starting material for MDMA, safrole, has become less available due to law enforcement action, causing illicit drug manufacturers to use anethole as an alternative.[6] Once thought to be a human invention,[7] recent research suggests PMA occurs as a trace alkaloid in plants including certain Acacia species.[8]
PMA first came into circulation in the early 1970s, where it was used intentionally as a substitute for the hallucinogenic properties of LSD.[9] It went by the street names of "Chicken Powder" and "Chicken Yellow" and was found to be the cause of a number of drug overdose deaths (the dosages taken being in the range of hundreds of milligrams) in the United States and Canada from that time.[10] Between 1974 and the mid-1990s, there appear to have been no known fatalities from PMA.[11]
Several deaths reported as MDMA-induced in Australia in the mid-1990s are now considered to have been caused by PMA, the users unaware that they were ingesting PMA and not MDMA as they had intended.[12] There have been a number of PMA-induced deaths around the world since then.[13][14]