^ sad for the destruction of nature? or sad for the punters?
I don't know why everyone thinks MDMA manufacture will kill the world's sassafras forests or those where safrole producing trees grow. As I've mentioned before,
several thousand tons of safrole are used every day to produce piperonal and piperonyl butoxide. This safrole comes from nature, and no one has yet claimed the flavours, perfumes and insecticides industries are destroying forests - well not specifically anyway, yet the great majority of 'harvested safrole' goes into producing these chemicals. Indiscriminate harvesting will obviously have more impact, but next to the amounts these legit industries use daily, global MDMA manufacture is but a drop in the ocean.
As mentioned, the reasons for the shortage are largely related to legality, ease of detection, penalties for trafficking, and the market where substitutes are often both easier to source-manufacture and just as easy to sell.
If it were merely safrole availability, then manufacturers would use piperonal to make PMK, or even methylenation of eugenol to get the normal starting material. On a large scale either would surely have to be considered economical.
IMO it's very likely small scale local production of MDMA occurs. Why wouldn't it? There's nothing hard about an OTC based synthesis. If it does occur, then it's probably low key; for friends, friends of friends etc. After all, the Chinese, with primitive wooden stills, were producing the byproduct safrole from Camphor 100 years ago (Check out Essential Oils vol 3 by Ernest Guenther for pics of these stills and a list of chemicals obtained from Cinnamomum camphora - nothing was wasted ) so it's certainly not rocket science. Scaling up OTC production would be difficult but not impossible IMO.