Ingestion of cocaine still seems oddly wasteful in terms of bioavailability for such an expensive ingredient, but I'm not accounting for the inflationary effects of prohibition.
Firstly, it wasn't all pure and for the record, there were fake-ass, pressed & stamped, bunk AF pills sold back then, too. Shit still happened; people were poisoned by PMA, some fatally, in a number of places including Chicago in the late 90s, for example.
Secondly, sassafras contains mostly the allylbenzene, safrole, which needs isomerizing and is then typically converted to an intermediate—MDP-2-P (aka: PMK)—which is then reduced to MDMA (or MDA, MDE, et al.). I'm pointing this out so no one becomes confused thinking only MDMA from the 90s was made from sassafras oil and/or that MDMA made from, say, "PMK-glycidate" is somehow inexplicably different from MDMA made a few decades earlier.
Redosing is still not uncommon.
You're drifting into a Grampa's "Back in
my day" rant, haha; it's easy to do…
Agreed. I feel blessed to have tried even half the compounds I've had now. This was a major reason I set up a lab years ago – I thought I was gonna have to make these compounds myself if I wanted to taste them. And yeah going to raves has always been kick-ass.
Grampa and his 90s Gabber over here…
I'm much more optimistic. Hopefully everything will be legal by then, and they'll have the chance to explore inner space safely and without the danger of crippling legal consequences once they're adults. And they'll admire how courageous their grandparents' generation was for taking those early risks and fighting for everyone's right to explore their own minds. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Wow. You really see it that way? Like Shulgin was busy designing new "fantastic party chems" (FPCs?), and the "Chinese did build on his work"? As if the Chinese govt. shared a common goal with Dr. Alexander Shulgin (lol) of designing and producing new FPCs (haha), and they actually
built on his work.

Or like Shulgin was secretly selling RCs and motivated by profits, lol. Obviously this was not the case, as you know. What I'm saying is: it's woefully inaccurate to conflate the life's work of Dr. Shulgin with the profit-incentivized goals and strategies of Chinese RC manufacturers, so statements like this can be misleading to others.
I don't know about "should be made in bulk"—I think I disagree there—but I agree that 4-MAR is a fascinating compound. I've written about it a little on this site some months ago and I've researched it in the past… We're getting a little off-topic… Shoot me a PM if you feel like discussing 4-MAR at all.
[Edited for clarity.]