Pubdate: Fri, 4 Jan 2008
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Martin Samuel
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Richard+Brunstrom
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

BETTER TO HAVE AN E THAN A BEE

We Should Stop Agonising Over Ecstasy. Richard Brunstrom Is Right - 
It Is Remarkably Safe

This is the story of Mr A, a patient formerly under the addiction 
centre at St George's Medical School in London. His name was kept 
private either for professional reasons or because he cannot remember 
it. Between the ages of 21 and 30, Mr A is believed to have taken 
40,000 Ecstasy pills. This figure is so insane it is actually 
comical. His intake rose from five pills over each weekend, to a 
little over 100 each month and, finally, 25 every day, a habit he 
maintained for four years, no doubt to the awe of his social circle.

Unsurprisingly, he was left with severe short-term memory problems, 
hallucinations, paranoia and muscle rigidity; which, in the 
circumstances, is like taking a header from the top of Canary Wharf 
and getting away with a chipped tooth and a mildly sprained ankle.

Christos Kouimtsidis, who was his consultant psychiatrist, described 
Mr A as having trouble functioning in everyday life. "He could not 
remember the time, the day, what was in his supermarket trolley," he 
said, which seems a tad churlish considering most of us couldn't be 
trusted in the canned goods aisle on much more than Piriton and two 
slugs of Night Nurse.

So what does this tell us about the killer drug Ecstasy? Well, as 
killer drugs go, it is a bit of a lightweight. Try taking 25 Sudafed 
a day for four years and see what happens. Try taking 25 of anything 
sold for a headache at Boots, for that matter. When the unpopular 
North Wales police chief Richard Brunstrom claimed Ecstasy to be a 
"remarkably safe substance" this week, he was predictably shouted down.

Yet with recent estimates running at 730,000 users in the United 
Kingdom (2003 figures) taking between 500,000 and two million tablets 
each weekend, how else would its performance be graded? Since 1994 
there have been approximately 400 deaths in which Ecstasy has been a 
contributory factor. In 2005 alone 8,836 deaths were alcohol-related 
and roughly 100 deaths each year are attributed to overdoses or 
adverse reactions to aspirin or paracetamol.

So say there are a ball-park 1.25 million Ecstasy tablets taken each 
week in Britain. That is 65 million annually and 910 million since 
1994, working out as one death every 2,275,000 tablets. "Some users 
suffer heatstroke, nausea, blurred vision and sweating," one 
newspaper told its readers, neglecting to add that by and large the 
rest have a blinding night out and get up for work on Monday morning 
with a clearer head than heavy drinkers whose drug of choice, though 
also given to side-effects such as nausea, blurred vision and 
sweating, not to mention acts of violence and severe mood swings, is 
legally approved. Ask any copper the cause of the violence in our 
city centres on Saturday nights and he won't say Ecstasy.

"Brunstrom should be made to stand by Siobhan's grave every week and 
see how he feels," said Des Delaney, whose daughter died from toxic 
reaction to Ecstasy in 2005. The newspaper report on Mr Brunstrom's 
comments said that Siobhan took an Ecstasy tablet, but that is not 
quite true (just as it is so often claimed that a victim was trying 
the drug for the first time, unlikely in the case of a person taking 
four or five tablets). In fact, the coroner's report said Siobhan 
bought four and consumed one and a half Ecstasy tablets, drinking ten 
bottles of water and dancing until 5am. It described her reaction as 
an "extremely rare condition", and said the time delay in receiving 
treatment was also a factor, although hospital staff were not blamed.

Getting your take on recreational drug use from grieving parents is 
like forming a view on the value of insects based on the thoughts of 
a person whose partner has died from anaphylactic shock caused by a 
bee or wasp sting (between two and nine people are killed this way 
each year in Britain, with four in every 1,000 believed susceptible).

And on a ratio basis hardly anyone gets stung by bees. Indeed, a bee 
sting is a topic of conversation for the rest of your life. "Yeah, I 
got stung once. Little bastard crawled up my trouser leg and when I 
reached down to scratch..." So think about it. Statistically, being 
in a nightclub full of Ecstasy-users may be safer than being stung in 
your garden in August.

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."

And there, in a nutshell, is the experience of most casual drug users 
in Britain today. We hear a lot about how harmful drugs are, never 
how harmless. Not a word about how, for most people, they are 
something you grow out of, as surely as you grow out of small cars 
with souped-up engines. The Ecstasy users of 1991 are now talking 
house prices and schools over dinner, just like their parents. So 
don't worry, folks. This generation will end up voting Conservative 
same as the last lot.

It's a phase. It will pass. Even Mr A knocked it on the head when he 
turned 30; even a bloke on 25 Es a day worked out he was too old to 
keep bursting into tears each time one of the little critters didn't 
pull through on Animal Hospital.

Mr Brunstrom wants drugs legalised, though, and this is where we must 
draw the line. Not for reasons of morality but because, back in the 
days when such things were important, we would never have left our 
weekend in the hands of the same people who brought us the rotten 
rail service, failing NHS, useless schools, limp-wristed police force 
and tinpot incompetent councils. In our experience, the suppliers 
were, by and large, reliable, organised and provided a very 
professional service. Let Mr Brunstrom concentrate on getting his 
name in the newspapers, and leave drugs to the experts. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake