MMM

Here is a rather silly ONDCP Press Release about a "dangerous new drug threat":

Extreme Ecstasy!!

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is warning public health and safety leaders across the country about a dangerous new drug threat coming from Canada. Ecstasy laced with methamphetamine (meth) has been entering the United States illegal drug markets, particularly in northern border states. Intelligence reports indicate that once smuggled into the U.S., the meth-laced Ecstasy is then being distributed throughout the country.

I took this "new drug". In 1998. This is like calling The Backstreet Boys a dangerous new threat. While I'll concede to the DEA that I feel Backstreet to be both dangerous and a threat, I hardly feel that they are what you would call "new". In fact they felt tired and old in '98, but I digress.

The folks at Reason report on the bewilderment of one of the Canadian heads of drug policy, Paul Nadeau, head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's national drug branch:

"According to our stats the presence of methamphetamines in ecstasy is dropping," he said, adding tests by the RCMP indicate that currently, about 35 per cent of ecstasy pills contain meth, down from 75 per cent several years ago.

"Why now do they feel the need to announce this to the world?" Nadeau said of the Office of National Drug Control Policy."

I would say that the answer is troubling, in either scenario I can imagine. In the less cynical one, the ONDCP is incredibly inept at viewing current drug trends and quite ill-informed. The other, more likely, scenario, is that this is the ONDCP version of an Orange Alert, something to keep parents scared and to justify increased funding.

I'll admit that I think Ecstasy 3000, or whatever you want to call it, is a bad drug. It is actually one of the reasons I stopped taking E. It was always very difficult to find pure MDMA, particularly if you happened to buy at the party/rave. MDMA by itself is actually not terribly harmful, it is the crap with which they cut it that makes it so: meth, cocaine, heroin, and (in one of my more disturbing trips) cough medicine.

This press release is actually a clear argument for the legalization of Ecstasy. With regulation, the danger of Tweak-E would be non-existent.