they (cooks/pressers) know full well what they are doing and that is maximising their profit. in regards to intelligence the onus is on the individual necking the shit.
I disagree, look at how negative things got when we found out about Mortal Kombats having a tiny, tiny trace. They had to pump out new ones even though realistically these pills are fairly safe due to the ratio and in comparison to other PMA/PMMA pills. Considering the amount of money invested in synthing these drugs and the quantity created it's unlikely that those synthing are intentionally putting in PMA/PMMA. It's likely how precursors are now harder to get and other alternative synth routes are being taken. It only takes a few test results to completely ruin that pills reputation, I watched it happen with the rolexs. It's extremely hard for the average drug user to find out the contents of a pill beyond reagent tests, especially those in the UK. Back in the 90s people didn't even have to worry about reagent testing, so I wouldn't say it's intelligence - more the resources available to us, so will agree that the legality is definitely a big factor in this.
I'm someone who took a large amount of Green Rolexs for weeks/months on end (likely the same PMMA batch) and did not suffer any harm. I recall crushing these things up by the 2-3 on tables and just caining lines flat out after eating plenty beforehand, there was 1000s of these about and really cheap. I know countless other people who did and we would have been on it hard and with combinations of other weird drugs that wasn't very well done harm reduction wise. I am fairly sure I combined these at one stage with ritalin, valium, speed, ketamine and alcohol and while I threw up blood due to the stupidity of the combination I put it completely down to the combination rather than the pill still. Although please note that I was on a very, very self-destructive path during this stage and this isn't common for my drug usage.
Compared to the amount of people who took these pills and died or the amount of pills eaten and deaths it is quite a low percentage of people getting killed. Hundreds of people did not die from this pill, word spreads extremely quickly. Although it generally takes at least one death in the media for an impact on drug users who aren't familiar with harm reduction.
One of the people that did die had been partying for 2 days and consuming large amounts of alcohol, they ended up having a seizure (to best of my knowledge, I was not there) and died. Everyone else at the party was 100% fine. They were shit pills though, they didn't feel right to me and I stopped taking. The comedown was a lot more taxing on the body. They lacked some things such as empathy that I go for strongly in an MDMA high and originally I thought it was just a shitty synth, now I realize otherwise.
Generally if you don't cain pills ridiculously and don't combine with alcohol etc if you take 1-2 of these pills you probably wont notice apart from a slightly different high. I can't confirm this any further though as I wont be touching the combination again. However, please don't do it as it isn't worth the risk. I no longer take pills unless they are properly tested for their full contents, reagent tests aren't really sufficient anymore unless you're just suspicious the pill isn't MDMA.