[Stu]

Originally Posted by Blitzen

Its not the deaths that ecstasy causes, its the mental illnesses that it causes in people which scares me a lot more.

I dunno, if a government took charge of drugs and made them safe then I'd support it but I can't see that happening.

The jury is still out on long term mental effects taking MDMA can have. Serotogenic changes have been observed in rats who have been blitzed in laboratory experiments with Happy Monday's style doses of the drug. Taking Ecstacy every day for a few years as many people did back in the rave heyday can exhibit serotonin imbalances or psychological changes in the human brain but then again these people were always idiots for taking it everyday. That would fall under gross abuse. Dropping pills soley on the weekend every now and then is not going to impair much on your mental health, I would imagine.

And yes, the government could very, very easily make all drugs safer. Dosage is the main problem with illegal drugs. Simply put you go from A to B straight away. The manner in which MDMA or something similar is taken would be akin to necking back a bottle of high proof vodka straight to get absoloutely rat arsed within minutes. If the chemical were legal could you not very easily lagerize it into a liquid, drinkable solution that has a very pleasant, slow release effect? Obviously some people would still abuse it but the vast majority of happy, open minded people should not be punished severely for the folly of the few as some slightly more sheltered people in this thread seem to think.

What about Cannabis? Most uneducated people seem to forget when discussing the mental health implications of smoking high grade skunk that this is yet another problem of prohibition, not the substance itself. Cannabis is being grown improper for fast and cheap by greedy blitzkrieg style growers who are simply trying to selectively breed the stuff to death so it has super high levels of the mindracing, psychoactive chemical THC but very, very low levels of CBD - Cannabidiol. The other Cannabinoid in the Cannabis plant that people seem to forget about.

It's an antipsychotic chemical that doesn't destroy the high but merely calms and mellows out the more mind bending effects of the THC. It also reduces growth of aggressive human breast cancer cells in vitro and reduces their invasiveness. It has also been shown to relieve convulsion, inflammation, anxiety, and nausea amongst other things.

Of course all of this is heavy reading for people who would much rather sit on their hands and denounce anyone who dares to light one up as someone leading an unfulfilled, dismal life of servitude to chemicals. If they don't like something, others who do should have the book thrown at them. A pattern of thought as dangerous as any bag of Crystal Meth.