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News - WA's Deadly ecstasy risk - Sunday Times 18/9/05(**New: response from journo**)

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News - WA's Deadly ecstasy risk - Sunday Times 18th Sept 05

WA's Deadly ecstasy risk
Pills contain cancer chemicals

Terevor Paddenburg

Ecstasy tablets laced with chemicals including pesticides, animal tranquillisers and cacer-causing by-products are being sold on WA streets.

The Sunday Times has uncovered evidence that some pills sold in Perth contain frightening amounts of dangerous chemicals.

Documents obtained from the WA Chemistry Centre, which tests illicit drugs seized by police, reveal a dramatic shift in the ecstasy market.

It has prompted renewed warnings from police and health experts that young people taking ecstasy at raves and nightclubs are gambling with their lives.

One beige pill branded with an Xbox motif contained only ketamine - a veterinary tranquilliser that can cause delusions - and no trace of MDMA, the key ingredient in ecstasy.

A second beige pill with the Calvin Klein motif contained a cocktail of ketamine, speed and caffeine, but no MDMA.

Alarmingly, a batch of pills coloured green and stamped with a Mitsibishi logo, contained a by-product of the drug manufacturing process suspected of causing cancer.

Colin Priddis, manager of WA Chemistry Centre's illicit-drug testing lab, said the by-product chemical was known as MDEA and "could well be carcinogenic".

"When you manufacture these drugs you get all sorts of by-products and what effect they have toxicologically just isn't known," he said.

Mr Priddis said other batches of pills he had tested contained pesticides and cough medicine.

One seized batch contained no MDMA, but a cocktail of seven other drugs, including extremely high doses of caffeine.

Ecstasy tablets containing a chemical used to treat cats and dogs for incontinence had also appeared on the market.

Last week, Royal Perth Hospital toxicologist Frank Daly, who treats overdose victims weekly, said that illicit drug use in WA had become "the norm".

He said everyone from lawyers to labourers were going on weekend drug binges.

WA Police drug education officer Gill Wilson said users were playing "Russian roulette" every time they swallowed a pill.

He said that in WA, ecstasy was smuggled into Australia from Europe, where manufacturers had secret labs making millions of pills at a time for less than 1c each.

By the time they hit WA, the pills were retailing for $30 to $45 each.

Sgt Wilson warned there was no set recipe for ecstasy and the purity and additives varied wildly between types and batches.

In the three months to July 1 this year, WA police made 120 separate ecstasy seizures.

But Sgt Wilson admitted catching ecstasy dealers was difficult without good intelligence because pills were small and easily disguised as medication or lollies.

Worldwide, there were 1190 known ecstasy "brands", many of them in WA, including pills with Playboy, Versace, Harry Potter and Red Bull motifs.

Sometimes pesticides and other chemicals were used to give the user a "head rush".

Sgt Wilson said high-quality Motorola pills had appeared in WA, but within months there were at least four copycat batches, some which looked identical but were placebos made from flour and water.

Source - Sunday Times 18th Sept. 2004
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Never would've dunked that green mitsies have MDEA. Wasn't it supposed to give a low-intensity roll?

EDIT: Oh, wait, nevermind - who knows which batch they tested...

Still curious to know which Motorollas they meant though. Only from the academical point of view of course...
 
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Heh, some more media speculation - there was no evidence on the whole pesticide thing was there? strange that... we all know we get Ketamine in pills, as well as caffeine and speed.. what where they trying to prove..

interesting about the green mitzi's tho, MDE.. carcinogenic? i'd like to see some evidence that backs that statement up
 
But Sgt Wilson admitted catching ecstasy dealers was difficult without good intelligence because pills were small and easily disguised as medication or lollies.
Click to expand...

Wow... Lollies thats actually sumthin ive never though disguising them as

8o 8o :D THANKS SARGENT WILSON:D 8o 8o
 
At least they got the price right this time. However I'd like to see studies that show MDEA to be carcinogenic. Also - pesticides? I know caffeine kills insects so is that what they mean?
 
How do you get MDEA as a byproduct of MDMA synthesis - I would have thought that you'd have had to substitute ethylamine in the reductive amination step? Hardly sounds like something that you could do by accident.
 
i'm kinda finding it hard to find anything about 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-ethylamphetamine (MDEA)

what is it and how does it work and why isn't it as good as MDMA?
 
Worldwide, there were 1190 known ecstasy "brands", many of them in WA, including pills with Playboy, Versace, Harry Potter and Red Bull motifs.
Click to expand...

anyone know where that number came from ?
 
i have not heard or seen half of those 'brands' circulating Perth atm..
or in recent memory
 
i read somewhere on www.biopsychiatry.com that MDEA releases 10 times less nor-adrenaline than MDMA, which makes it very hard to dance on !

also NA re-uptakes in the pre frontal cortext release (and uptake) dopamine.

MDMA releases lots of nor-adrenaline, infact one paper i read said it releases more nor-adrenaline than seratonin !
 
Deadly, how many people died off these pills..
could Sunday times please provide some statistics, i think there was a bigger chance the person driving the pill to get tested could of died!
or the person testing the pill could of spilled some acid on themselves and died.. that is the only risk i could see with them!

the MDEA Mitzi's could that possibly be the dud batch and explain why they still tested positive to reagent tests?
 
lol @ cancer chemicals
its a shame they gave up on "YOUR PILL CAN CONTAIN GLASS!"
that was a good one too.

Also, ive recently found out that ketamine can be used on humans. So why is it only reffered to as a dog and cat tranquilizer?
 
my mum is a chronic pain sufferer, she went into hospital and received ketamine.
she rang me and told me she just had a outer body experience...
damn her :(
 
Originally posted by menodici
How do you get MDEA as a byproduct of MDMA synthesis - I would have thought that you'd have had to substitute ethylamine in the reductive amination step? Hardly sounds like something that you could do by accident.
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Yes. I agree. It may well be that some unusual routes could result in this, but I can't think of any off hand.

The article stinks of B/S hype. There probably are carcinogenic or cytotoxic chemicals present in some MDMA and these chemicals probably are side reaction products from a synthesis, but I believe the journalist could have done far better at presenting this.

Why not pick a known chemical or two from forensics literature and reference a paper that shows the compound to be toxic? That would carry more weight IMO.

Instead they assume MDMA users are as ignorant as most journalists, and that by throwing all sorts of fandangle statements at them, a few will stop using. Maybe a few will, but how will these journalists be viewed by the greater majority of users if they ever do publish some real evidence? By and large it will probably be ignored by the educated masses.

Tell the truth and backup claims with proper scientific evidence. Other wise you're thrown on the crap journalists' shit pile.


PiHKAL # 106; MDEA

You can find evidence of MDEA being found in pills if you search the old ecstasy.org lab testing databases.
 
This is a pretty piss-poor article. It's really nothing more than a summary of out-dated and ignorant scaremongering about ecstacy and party drugs. It might as well have been written by anti-drugs campaigners or the WA police.

Just reefer madness in another guise.
 
so does that mean MDEA has a reaction which differs to that of MDMA when exposed to a reagent?
 
I wouldn't wrap a turd in the Sunday Times. It is pure lowest common denominator.

It saddens me that it sells so well in WA and is probably taken as gospel by some, but anyone with an ounce of critical thought capacity would identify this as tabloid baloney :)
 
chugs said:
so does that mean MDEA has a reaction which differs to that of MDMA when exposed to a reagent?
Click to expand...

Using the standard reagents I doubt you could tell any difference. P_d or CBM may be able to correct this.
 
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