Don't Take Candy From Strangers - Is That Really Ecstasy?
You've likely had parents who scoured your bag of Halloween candy searching for signs of 'suspicious' treats. You've been told hundreds of times, "Don't take food or candy from a stranger". Candy. Pretty, sweet, innocent. I remember Sweet-Heart candies. They came in all colours of the rainbow, they even had designs on them: hearts, spades, "Cool". Why just the other day I found a blue one with a dolphin pressed into it. It wasn't candy. It wasn't innocent. It was an ecstasy tablet, or E, or XTC. It's illegal because it contains MDMA otherwise known as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. It's dangerous not only because it usually contains MDMA, but because it very often is something quite different. This tablet contained MDMA, methamphetamine (SPEED, meth), pseudoephedrine (cough medication) and ketamine. This tablet was made in a stranger's grimy basement.
I'm a forensic chemist. I go to clandestine drug labs; places where illegal drugs are made to assist the police in their investigation. Clandestine drug labs are dangerous. They are filled with flammable solvents, toxic chemicals, corrosive chemicals, flammable solids and volumes of unmarked waste. They are chemically contaminated and often filthy with human waste as well as animal excrement. It is in this environment that chemicals like MDMA and meth are produced. Chemicals are mixed, cooked and manipulated. If it works, something resembling a whitish material is produced. If the guy selling chemicals was honest, the whitish material should be mostly MDMA or meth. if that was the intended product. Who knows?
Tablets are also pressed at clandestine drug labs. Buckets and bags of unlabelled whitish powders, coloured powders and coloured tablets are often found. There are Mitsubishi tabs, happy face tabs and dolphin tabs to name a few. The layers of dust are evidence that the presses were running. Even though I've been through the buckets of chemicals and waste and walked through the excrement, I am shocked to find the cook used Tempera powder paint to colour his tablets. I'm still so naive.
These "ecstasy" tablets are dangerous! You don't know who made them. You don't know how they were made. You don't know what's in them. These tablets are not natural, they are synthetically made in unsanitary, filthy, chemically contaminated places. The ingredients in the tablets are unknown and of unknown quality. The tablets were not made under the watchful eye of a regulated pharmaceutical company. The tablets were made by a criminal, a stranger.
Laboratory Specialist
Drug Analysis Service (DAS) Lab
Health Canada
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