[size=+1]Ecstasy is back in clubs as newly potent drug is taken with 'legal highs'[/size]
The drug of choice in the Nineties rave scene is coming back as a powder that can be shared socially like cocaine and distinguishes its more fashion-conscious users from 'pill heads'
Jamie Doward and Silvia Suárez Jiménez
The Observer, Sunday 20 November 2011
Ecstasy, the drug of choice for the clubbers of the early 1990s, is making a comeback. Once synonymous with the rave scene, its popularity declined as the diminishing amount of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, the potent chemical once found in ecstasy tablets, saw a new generation of clubbers seek alternative substances.
At the peak of its popularity, ecstasy was rarely out of the news with the designer drug blamed for a spate of deaths, often wrongly.
Just under 7% of 16 to 24-year-olds reported using ecstasy, according to the British crime survey of 2000-01, with more recent figures suggesting that the proportion had fallen to less than 4%.
Now, according to Drugscope, the organisation that monitors street prices of illicit substances, ecstasy is back in demand as producers reintroduce it as a "premium" product. The Drugscope survey found that, after an absence of more than a decade, high MDMA-content ecstasy was on sale in half of the 20 towns and cities featured in its annual survey of the UK drugs scene.
In some parts of the country, pills are selling for up to £15 each, pushing the average price of ecstasy up to £4 from last year's average of £2.65. At the millennium, some very low strength pills were selling for as little as £1 each.
The increase in potency has reduced the number of pills people are taking, with one or two pills sufficing instead of five or more, according to Drugscope, whose findings correspond with a growing body of research produced by a team at Lancaster University that suggests the market in ecstasy is fragmenting.
The team, led by Fiona Measham, a senior lecturer in criminology, observed that a two-tier market in ecstasy had opened up. "Generic" ecstasy pills, which have a minor stimulative effect but which do not necessarily contain an active dose of MDMA, sell for about £3 each, as compared with those ecstasy pills that contain an active dose of MDMA, which sell for about £10 each.
The team also noted that in the summer of 2011 there emerged "exceptionally high strength ecstasy" that contained a "much higher dose of MDMA than seen in recent years".
Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/20/ecstasy-returns-to-clubs
The drug of choice in the Nineties rave scene is coming back as a powder that can be shared socially like cocaine and distinguishes its more fashion-conscious users from 'pill heads'
Jamie Doward and Silvia Suárez Jiménez
The Observer, Sunday 20 November 2011
Ecstasy, the drug of choice for the clubbers of the early 1990s, is making a comeback. Once synonymous with the rave scene, its popularity declined as the diminishing amount of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, the potent chemical once found in ecstasy tablets, saw a new generation of clubbers seek alternative substances.
At the peak of its popularity, ecstasy was rarely out of the news with the designer drug blamed for a spate of deaths, often wrongly.
Just under 7% of 16 to 24-year-olds reported using ecstasy, according to the British crime survey of 2000-01, with more recent figures suggesting that the proportion had fallen to less than 4%.
Now, according to Drugscope, the organisation that monitors street prices of illicit substances, ecstasy is back in demand as producers reintroduce it as a "premium" product. The Drugscope survey found that, after an absence of more than a decade, high MDMA-content ecstasy was on sale in half of the 20 towns and cities featured in its annual survey of the UK drugs scene.
In some parts of the country, pills are selling for up to £15 each, pushing the average price of ecstasy up to £4 from last year's average of £2.65. At the millennium, some very low strength pills were selling for as little as £1 each.
The increase in potency has reduced the number of pills people are taking, with one or two pills sufficing instead of five or more, according to Drugscope, whose findings correspond with a growing body of research produced by a team at Lancaster University that suggests the market in ecstasy is fragmenting.
The team, led by Fiona Measham, a senior lecturer in criminology, observed that a two-tier market in ecstasy had opened up. "Generic" ecstasy pills, which have a minor stimulative effect but which do not necessarily contain an active dose of MDMA, sell for about £3 each, as compared with those ecstasy pills that contain an active dose of MDMA, which sell for about £10 each.
The team also noted that in the summer of 2011 there emerged "exceptionally high strength ecstasy" that contained a "much higher dose of MDMA than seen in recent years".
Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/20/ecstasy-returns-to-clubs
