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Think for me...

E

Elliven

Bluelighter
Joined
Mar 31, 2000
Messages
72
Location
Melbourne, Vic, Australia
Ahoy, I have been doing a bit of thinking lately, and one subject has me stumped:
I cannot understand why MDMA is illegal.
I honestly cannot think of a valid reason. Therefore I need you people to think for me. I do not want posts from people agreeing with me, think damnnit!
Things I have thought of:
1. It cannot be because it is physically addictive, causing people to commit crimes to get the money for their next hit (a la heroin)
2. Psychologically addictive? Maybe, but certainly no more so than gambling, and far less than alcohol, and smoking (I know it has a physical side too)
3. The effects of the drug are not particularly "bad" -- Many people (particularly the su-bourban and coke crowd) seem to get aggressive when they drink alcohol. I challenge you to find a user of MDMA who is spoiling for anything other than a hug.
4. Horrible side effects/long term effects. As far as I can tell immediate side effects are no worse than a nasty hangover, and can be limited by 5htp. Long term effects, we don't know yet, but hello?? Any smokers out there?
5. One could argue the deaths, they are a major argument against 'ecstacy" but we all know many "ecstacy" pills do not contain MDMA. To me the deaths speak of a greater need to educate, and regulate, rather than eliminate. (I'm kinda proud of that line
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)
6. I think my brain expired around here.
The same may go for many other drugs too, but MDMA is a shining example in my eyes.(and I can see really well, what with the big pupils
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)
Anyone got any reasons why it's illegal??
Any devils advocates?
eepeep!
 
Well, the reason it was was first banned was because it had no immediate medical benifits. It doesnt. It makes you feel nice for a short amount of time then dumps you off a cliff. Hey, don't get me wrong, I love the stuff, but you asked.
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WARNING: This post may not meet the standards or expectations of the general bluelight community. I may not be held responsible but can only ask for your support in developing new/better/exciting/informative posts. Thankyou for your support in this hard time - Mr. Horse
 
But Mr. Horse, tobacco has no medical benefits!
Anyway, I guess it is illegal because, wether we realise it or not, it IS a dangerous drug. People overdose. You can say well they overdose on alcohol etc etc but you have to remember that alcohol, tobacco and most other legal drugs have been around for a long time.
Pharmecuticals (sp?) are tested for years and years before they are sold to the public, and even strong painkillers have to be prescribed by a doctor.
MDMA is strong stuff. We know that. Making it legal would have heaps of ramifications (sp again?).
There is no research on real long term side effects.
Research does show that MDMA can cause depression.
I guess it doesn't really make sense to the lawmakers to legalise a drug that has no medical benefits and makes people depressed!
Sad but true
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Also, tobacco and alcohol are highly taxable goods from which the government rakes in huge amounts of revenue. Given the multiple components of MDMA synthesis, it would be very difficult and unrealistic to tax. Also, the returns would be much lower compared to the former two.
To emphasise on the Mr Horse and happy doofer's posts, not only does MDMA have little to offer in terms of medical benefits, it is also harder to regulate dosage. The amount of alcohol one needs to consume to achieve an uncomfortable high is rather large, even for the least tolerant of person. This is because consumable alcohol is highly diluted. Beers are only 3-15% while spirits are 20-50%. Whereas with MDMA, it's only a little pill and the uninitiated may readily consume 5,6 even 10 piils in one sitting due to impatience and stupidity. This could result in severe reactions, sometimes fatal.
It may not be expensive like heroin but once taxed by government bodies, the price may skyrocket instead of dropping. Big Brother wants a fatter wallet too.
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Also, blackmarket pills will always be present with dodgy content, either to compete with legal prices or to beat any regulations that comes with legalisation. Look around you, illegal bookies still exists, duty unpaid cigarettes and liquor too.
While one may think that MDMA has no ill-effects with respect to violence or other stupor induced crime, that may not necessarily be true. It has potential as a date-rape drug and if the user is naturally of ill-intent, no amount of loved-up feeling will change him into Mother Theresa. Personally, i have witnessed this and fell victim to one such person. There was so much hate and ill-will in him that he was paranoid everytime he rolled and quarrelled with friends, took advantage of females ( rolling or not), and even stole my money ( and i gave him his pill)
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. Out of the thousands of MDMA users, there will definetly be a few rotten apples.
Being the negatively objective person that i am
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, give me a reason why it should be legal and i will counter it. Don't get me wrong, i too wish for legalisation and regulation but there are two sides to every coin. Personally i think the govt has thought of only the first reason i gave.
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Actually MDMA does have some medical benefits. It used to be a diet drug, if i recall correctly. And i read somewhere that in the US, studies are being done to see if it can be used as psychological medication with rape-trauma victims and war-trauma soldiers, with some success. Wish i could remember the URL. It could be one of the older threads here in Bluelight.
i hope no trigger-happy pseudo-journalist will stumble upon this thread and misquote any of this.
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Actually skye, the government could make unbelievable profits of MDMA, much much higher than alcohol or tobacco. See, it costs about us$2 to make one pill. So australian (sorry, I know you are in singapore) about $3.50. The price would dramtically go down in making them because the ingredients would be legal and made here, therefore the price would go down because no-one has to risk bringing a million pills in. So lets say after it becomes legal, to make it costs au$1.50. The government charge $25 a pill, thats a $23.50 profit. Around 900% return. Not bad if you ask me!!
But skye summed it up very well. There is still alot of research to do before this becomes legal, if ever.
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Syke MDMA was also used as an aid in marriage counselling for a time. I think it has been used for a few other things as well.
Also given the massive social cost of Alcohol & Tobacco I doubt that the government would be too keen to drop another social drug onto the market
Still its current legal status hasn't impacted my fun at all - just got to be careful, responsible and use a little common sense.
Cheers D-child
 
Well said Syke (cept for that bit about the psuedo-journalists, now I got the paranoids...)
The reason I did not post ranting about why MDMA *should* be legal is that again, there are no real reasons. It seems to sit in a sort of limbo--No real arguments to make it legal (apart from the safety factor) But still (I think) no reason for it to remain illegal.
Mr.Horse: Are you sure that was why it was banned?? There are many compounds out there that remain legal despite them having no immediate medical benefits. I remember reading a post from someone who purchased MDMA powder legally over the counter in the 50's I think?? What happened?
.
 
The main reason why MDMA isn't legal now is it's "high potential for abuse". If *used* MDMA is a wonderful drug, if it was legal their would be a huge risk of *abuse*. As syke said there will be some morons that dispite all warnings will have 5 or 6 pills in one go. Their needs to be a safety margin that stops the stupid from getting messed up by an e. I think it was pinger (could be wrong) that worked out a method for legalisation of MDMA with measures to prevent abuse like having to pass a small test on long-term, short-term affects, serotonin , etc before they legally have the ability to purchase their e which comes with a bit of 5htp.
Realistically, i think, we won't be buying MDMA legally for a very long time unless something very drastic happens
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lets just say MDMA was made legal. like nicotein and alcohol... any government regulated MDMA supply would have to be of very low percentages. so u might b able to get pills prescibed with say 10-20% mdma.
and right there is the potential for abuse.... ppl dropping heaps to get high.
unless we're talking about MDMA for sale from the chemist or the health food store... but that is a dream come true.
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"just pass the vibes on, and take it easy....
 
If only tariffs were so simply laid out Horsey. You see, with alcohol and tobacco, there is basically only one product to be taxed on. What you are talking about is only import/export tariffs.
To legalise MDMA would also include it's manufacture and hence it's compounds. Unscrupulous ( and savvy) businessmen would declare the import of say saffrole for purposes other than manufacture of MDMA in order to be taxed less. In order to get around this, the govt would simply place an across-the-board tariff on most, if not all, major ingredients for it's manufacture. This would then push prices up.
Just ask your local brewery on the taxes they have to pay on their ingredients and licenses. It may be less evident with alcohol and tobacco as their manufacture involves less stages and lower yield. With MDMA manufacture, each stage of process may result in different end-products. And more significantly, the yield-to-constituent ratio is way higher resulting in a very uncontented and greedy Big Brother.
While regulatatory steps like pinger laid out sounds plausible, this would once again spawn a blackmarket for people who fail the criterias or simply can't be bothered, but still want a quick buzz.
Dream come true indeed, but it'll just remain a dream. At least in the near future. IMHO, the best we can hope for is for the classification of MDMA to be lowered, ie higher tolerance from the authorities for low-level possession and consumption.
Let the hate-mail pour in!
[This message has been edited by syke (edited 13 May 2000).]
 
Actually there is a very good reason that xtc is not legal. It was invented in 1914, and therefore has passed the 30 year period a drug can be patented ( no one realised it was useful in this time).
Since the drug can not be patented no company can be the sole manufacturer and claim profits from it, and it therefore can not be TAXED ( Yes pluse GST does not apply).
This is of course in contrast to other seratonin raising drugs!!!
 
This chemical was discovered in 1912 by Merck. MDMA was a byproduct of a synthesis of hydrastinin; Merck was looking for a good vasoconstrictive substance to use as a styptic, to stop bleeding, and when they stumbled across this chemical in their synthesis, as any good chemical company would do, they patented their finding. Of note, at the time of the patent application, there was no use specified for MDMA. It was never considered for marketing by Merck, and was never marketed as an appetite suppressant by Merck or anyone else.
from: http://www.maps.org/research/mdma/holland0300.html
Click to expand...
Merck still exist and probably still have the patent, my knowledge of patent law is lacking...
I wonder if they do have it, could they sue back-yard chemists for using it?
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i'm working on a long, personal response to this thread which hopefully i'll finish soon.
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.... he who makes a beast of himself, rids himself of the pain of being a man...
 
Well, to try and keep the level of people taking for instance, 5 or more pills in one go, they could limit the amount of pills you can buy to, say, one a fortnight or so. Then if you wanted to have a larger night you could not take any for a month, then have 2, or longer, etc. Or you could get friends to give you their pill quota.
But if the pills were good, most people wouldn't bother, and just leave it as an occasional recreation.
Oh, and in respond to someone's post saying tobacco has no medical advantages: Nicotine actually does a few useful things to the body, such as helping the brain resist the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Its just when you smoke it it does all the damage to your body: get nicotine patches or one of them funky inhalers. Anyone tried one of them by the way?
SpankY
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Remember, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you.
 
Think about this. I think part of the fact e is sometimes so appealling is that not everyone has access to it. It's exciting to go 2 aparty + know what you're doing is wrong. Imagine if it was legalised. It would be alot more readily available to whoever wanted it. I think if everyone discovered the power of e the whole situation could get out of control. Your parents could start taking it, imagine going 2 the shops and there were 13 year old running around off their heads, you go to a wedding + are offered e.
I know it seems good in theory but do we really want e to be socially accepted, to become the new alcohol?????
 
I personally think it's wrong to compare E with alcohol and nicotine. Sure alcohol and nicotine do have long term ill-effects, but neither of the drugs play around with the chemicals in your brain as much. A few psychiatrists who I have talked to say there was a conference about ecstacy a while ago, and they said that ecstacy does cause irrepairable brain damage, and can cause the onset of alzheimer's at an earlier age. This conference wasn't media hype, but real research by real professionals, who really have nothing to gain by lying. Also these specialists said they have treated many E users for lots of mental health problems, which they believe was the result of their use of ecstacy.
But I guess they'd see many more alcoholics suffering depression, etc..
But brain damage? yuck!
 
discussed in that maps seminar (see the everyone read post for the link to the real audio) is the importance in differentiating between damage and disfunction.
it is agreed that MDMA may do some damage to parts of the brain, but what has not been established is wether or not this causes any actual disfunction. parts of your body get damaged all the time, its only when these parts stop working do you have anything to worry about.
the parkinsons disease link has been debunked many times.
[This message has been edited by johnboy (edited 16 May 2000).]
 
Ahk, thanks johnboy.
Yeah, I guess the brain does get "damaged" through natural ways, but why cause more damage to it , of which you don't know the consequences? ..
Well, I guess the consequences so far haven't seemed too bad, considering ecstacy has been in use frequently over the past 3 decades. Or maybe this new generation of ecstacy users will be different -pills which aren't as pure, more frequent use.
I can't decide whether to be anti-ecstacy, which I don't want to, as I know what a wonderful drug it is, but pro-ecstacy? it is a DRUG which plays with chemicals in your brains, and is unknown how it will affect you in the long-term. Might just stay in the centre, and be best if i don't take it for a while. ..
Anyways, all you mature moderate ecstacy users, good on ya. But to those who over do it a few times a week, and take multiple pills each time, you should really take a long hard look at yourself, sure it's your choice to take drugs, but taking drugs too often does show it's toll on your body and mind.
As for legalising.. It's never going to happen so I don't really think there's much point of discussing it. "The DEATH drug turns legal" I think there is enough quality going around, and all you people are still having the best of time, legalising is not necessary, especially for a drug which causes brain damage (again, as jb said , from the MAPS report, it may cause no ill effect on the functioning of one's brain) and especially because there is NO chance it will be legalised.
I'm a dreamer, but the realist in me has come out. Yes it would be great to legalise ecstacy,, but I can't see it happening in my lifetime.
byea..
;p
 
i just wanted to bump this cos it's probably the only post of substance that i have ever posted
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"Let us hope that the whores of evil no longer loiter on the doorsteps of your path"-Jack Kerouac
 
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