Positive Drug Story #1,216,001: Golfing on E

The biochemist, Alexander Shulgin, first reported MDMA’s beneficial effects in a journal article in 1978. MDMA, or ecstasy, creates empathy in its users and has exhibited great potential as a psychotherapy tool. Shulgin himself enjoyed using it to loosen up and relate to others at social gatherings.

Despite the fact psychologists and psychiatrists championed its value in therapy, when young adults started using it as a club drug in the 1980s the DEA made it a Schedule I Drug. This classification is supposed to be restricted to drugs with high abuse potential and no acceptable medical uses. [MDMA has no addiction potential. (Gahlinger, p. 338)] A DEA pharmacologist has admitted the DEA wasn’t even aware psychiatrists were using MDMA for treatment. In other words, they did not bother to research the drug before deciding to throw adults in prison for its possession.

The mass media proceeded to jump on the “all recreational drugs are evil” bandwagon by portraying ecstasy as a drug that leads kids to crazy casual sex and death. MDMA causes empathy not increased libido. The fallacy of it being a sex drug is obvious for many men as Cooder notes in the above cartoon. For the gross exagerration of its deadliness see the previous post, “Deadly Nuts: If Peanuts Were Portrayed Like E.”

As Jacob Sullum wrote in Saying Yes, “Like LSD, [MDMA] became illegal because too many people started to enjoy it.” (Sullum, p. 171)

To preempt MDMA destroys your brain comments, here is a link to Shulgin’s response and a 2006 journal article link disproving the brain damage theories.

Request for Positive Drug Stories

If you have a positive drug story that is either unique, humorous, or interesting; and are willing to have it told through illustrations please contact me at rob@suburra.com. Anonymity is respected.

Sources:

1. Paul Gahlinger, Illegal Drugs (2001).
2. Jacob Sullum, Saying Yes (2003).

Pro-Drugs Column Runs In UK

London’s esteemed Times newspaper ran a pro-drugs piece by one of its columnists, Martin Samuel (left). This is amazing. In the United States even articles that simply make policy arguments against drug prohibition – while still echoing the “drugs are bad” mantra – are almost never published. (See Eric Sterling’s post, LINK.) Samuel’s piece was a flat-out defense of recreational drugs. Wow.

Here’s an excerpt:

Now I don’t see my views on drugs reflected too often in the mainstream media, so here goes. This is the comedian Bill Hicks quoted in performance at the Laff Stop, Austin, Texas, December 1991. “I don’t do drugs anymore,” he said, “but I’ll tell you something honestly: I had a great time doing drugs. Sorry. Never murdered anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone, never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife, or kids. Laughed my ass off, and went about my day. Sorry.”

Martin Samuel, “Better to Have an E Than a Bee,” Times, 4 Jan. 2008. LINK

Deadly Nuts: If Peanuts Were Portrayed Like E

Drug War Logic

This cartoon is based on national news coverage of an ecstasy (MDMA) death in 2002 and the anti-E government ads that followed. E kills roughly 3-9 Americans a year. Peanuts kill roughly 50-100 Americans a year. The death rate of first-time ecstasy users has been estimated by one study to be between .002% to .05%. Comparatively, .1% of Americans are estimated to have a life-threatening peanut allergy.

To read about golfing on E go to this post.

Source

1. Robert Arthur, You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (2007). LINK