Ecstasy's back: As two clubbers die after taking the rave-culture drug, it's now deadlier than ever

5th December 2011
By Steve Bird
Source: Daily Mail.

Deep in the remote rainforests of south-western Cambodia, swathes of endangered trees are being felled by gangs of men wielding axes and chainsaws.

Hidden beneath the lush green canopy, vats of boiling water filled with chopped tree trunks and roots bubble up in an unctuous yellow soup.

These makeshift factories are manufacturing safrole, from sassafras oil, to supply a growing demand created by young British people 8,000 miles away.

This illicit industry, controlled by armed criminal gangs and poor Cambodian villagers eking out a living from the land, is the first important stage in the manufacture of the world’s most famous club drug — Ecstasy.

It's back: Use of Class A drug Ecstasy is on the rise again in Britain

Safrole, one of the chemical building blocks of amphetamine, is then shipped out to ‘laboratories’ in China, Vietnam or Thailand, where it’s used to make a new, super-strong version of Ecstasy. The strength of the drug, which comes in tablet or a crystal powder form, depends on the amount of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine — a chemical known as MDMA — it contains.

Recent seizures of Ecstasy suggest that, following years of low levels of MDMA found in the drug, purity is rising to levels last found at the height of the rave music scene in the Nineties.

But few, if any, of the teenagers, students and clubbers who boast of the so-called love drug’s ability to bring people together, will realise that their thrill-seeking antics are destroying the rainforests.

More alarmingly, ‘popping’ these new pills — or ‘dabbing’ the MDMA powder on their gums — means they’re gambling with their lives. Last weekend, two men aged 20 and 21 died after apparently taking high-strength Ecstasy at a music event at Alexandra Palace, North London. A further 20 people were admitted to hospital suffering symptoms associated with an overdose.

Earlier this summer, two men died in Ayrshire after taking Ecstasy tablets believed to be six times stronger than normal.

Research by the UN suggests that up to 23 million people in the world have taken Ecstasy. And while no one knows how much of the drug is made globally, it is thought to be somewhere between 70 and 140 tonnes each year.

Arrest: Park rangers in Cambodia catching illegal plantation workers who harvest a key ingredient in Ecstasy

Ecstasy has been linked to more than 200 deaths in Britain since 1996, and can cause dehydration and overheating, as well as liver, kidney and heart problems. Long-term use can lead to depression, anxiety and memory loss. In 1996, the British Crime Survey found that nearly 7 per cent of all 16 to 24-year-olds reported using Ecstasy, a Class A drug.

But a concerted international effort to clamp down and control the manufacture and transportation of the raw ingredients helped halt the spread of the drug.

Since the millennium, Ecstasy use declined dramatically as pills became weaker, in part because safrole was harder to get because the rare trees needed to make it were disappearing and governments were cutting down on its illegal trade.

In comparison to the Nineties, when tablets were very strong, containing up to 80 per cent MDMA (the rest being so-called ‘bulking agents’), in recent years the MDMA in pills fell below 20 per cent. With the demise of Ecstasy, other synthetic drugs like mephedrone — known as meow meow — and ketamine, began to grow in popularity.

In the last financial year up until April 2011, the British Crime Survey found that just 3.8 per cent of young people reported using Ecstasy, half the number compared to 15 years earlier.

Hopes, however, that the war on Ecstasy was nearly over are sadly premature. In recent months, police seizures of Ecstasy have pointed at a resurgence of a devastatingly potent strain — and toxicological tests have found the percentage of MDMA in pills is on the increase.

It is this new batch of strong Ecstasy that is believed to have its origins in the rainforests of Cambodia.

Patrol: The cultivation in Cambodia is a connected to drug use in the West

Locked up: Workers seek to make safrole out of sassafras oil

Drug experts fear the new generation of users could be oblivious to its dangers. To them, the name of Leah Betts, who died in 1995 after taking a tablet on her 18th birthday when she drank vast quantities of water to combat the side-effects of dehydration, means nothing. Dr Fiona Measham, a lecturer in criminology at Lancaster University, says that a two-tier market now exists where weak Ecstasy, usually costing a few pounds a pill, is being sold alongside purer and more powerful tablets, some sold for up to £15 each.

‘The danger is mixing them up,’ she says, adding that users accustomed to taking a handful of weaker pills to get high ‘face dangers’ if they do the same with the new, stronger Ecstasy. ‘For young people today, Ecstasy is a new drug, and with that comes new risks for people who are, mostly, unaware of how to handle it.’

Her research has also found that the powder or crystal form of Ecstasy has grown in popularity, particularly across university campuses.

Paul Bunt, the drug strategy manager for Avon and Somerset Police, which covers the area where the Glastonbury music festival is held, says tests on Ecstasy seized at this year’s four-day event suggests levels of MDMA in the tablets are returning to the powerful levels of the Nineties. ‘The concern we have is that this new generation of clubbers are going to experience a very powerful drug compared to what they’ve been taking as Ecstasy before . . . and we may see an increase in drug-related deaths.’

Stash: Drug users say that new varieties of Ecstasy are proving popular

In a fashionable North London pub, Zoe, a 27-year-old university arts graduate and ‘recreational’ drug user, admits seeing a change in pills sold by dealers.

‘I had my first Ecstasy experience when I was a teenager in the late Nineties. Like everyone, I was into the music and clubbing scene. It was great. But, in recent years the quality of “e” dropped off. You had to take two or three of the cheap tablets to get the same effect.

‘A couple of months ago, I bought a £10 pill and took it, the first in ages. It blew my head off — I was very high and totally spaced out.’

Zoe, who would speak only using a pseudonym, lists a few of the different batches of Ecstasy pills and their nicknames and logos in circulation: there are smarties (a tiny ‘s’ is stamped on the tablet); mitsubishis (marked with the symbol used by the Japanese car manufacturer) and smiley faces (which has the outline of a smiling cartoon character on the pill).

Asked how she differentiates between the weak pills and the strong, she shrugs: ‘It’s what the dealer says, what friends tell you, even how much it costs that hints at the effects it will have. It’s not easy.’

In Cambodia, authorities hit the trade hard by making the production of safrole oil illegal in 2004. But the rewards for producers and smugglers are huge, and at one point there were estimated to be 75 factories in the mountains.

Last year, Cambodia’s army shut down two oil factories, where huge vats simmered for five days to create the oil.

In 2009, troops confiscated 33 tonnes of sassafras oil, destroying it at a public ceremony. The oil could have produced 245 million Ecstasy tablets, with a street value of billions of pounds.

Back in London, Zoe says that, despite the recent spate of deaths linked to the drug, she she has little intention of giving up her ‘recreational’ party habit.

‘The new batch in Britain is very good stuff. It’s hard to say No to.’