Only 40.5% of pills sold as ecstasy in the U.K. contain MDMA

A new study by American Addiction Centers has revealed that only 34.7% of ecstasy pills in circulation in the United States contain MDMA.

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The study is an important one as far as drug safety concerns go, as explained by the AAC in their introduction:

“Pure ecstasy includes a single ingredient: MDMA. Anything else has been modified to include other, sometimes deadly, chemical components. To understand how the purity of ecstasy has changed over the years, we analyzed more than 25,700 test reports of ecstasy from around the world to see how often these pills are cut with other substances.”

The study goes on to give some broad findings: “According to the more than 25,700 records taken between 2005 and 2017 from PillReports.net,nearly half of the MDMA pills inspected were adulterated in some capacity. In some cases, versions of the drug may contain no MDMA at all.”

Based on results of testing kits and/or consumption of users, again via Pill Reports, the Adulterant in Drugs study also showed that 20.9 per cent of pills in the U.S. contain MDxx, while 15.5 per cent contain unknown substances.

At 68.8 per cent, Netherlands has the highest amount of pills containing MDMA, followed by the U.K. at 40.5% and then the United States. Turkey has 29%, Canada has 25% and Australia at 16.1%.

More interesting information reported by the study includes the fact that “of over 22,000 pill samples recorded, more than 71 per cent of users believed the drugs had been adulterated based on their experience after consumption.

“While Pill Reports found more than 55 per cent of the drugs examined were, in fact, pure MDMA, less than 29 per cent of men and women who took these pills correctly assessed the quality or chemical components that made up this substance.”

Geographically speaking, “In Asia, drugs labeled as ecstasy were only slightly less likely to be pure MDMA than in the U.S. In Europe, purity was highest. This discrepancy highlights the variety of substances that make up drugs labeled as ecstasy or Molly. With drug officials finding new chemical makeups laced into these pills all the time, it has become nearly impossible to identify pure ecstasy without testing for adulterants first.”