A new study from Georgia State University, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, shows that there continues to be issues with misrepresentation of MDMA in unregulated markets across the United States, although there has been improvements in recent years.
MDMA, often referred to as “ecstasy”.
The research analyzed 4,719 alleged MDMA samples submitted to the DrugsData drug-checking service, aiming to understand how often the drug is misrepresented and identify trends in its purity over time.
The findings reveal that 75% of the samples were expected to contain only MDMA, but only about 48% of them actually did. “MDMA-only prevalence declined from 1999–2009 (57.4% to 15.2%), recovered from 2009–2017 (15.2% to 56.0%), and increases more moderately from 2017–2023 (56.0% to 74.1%)”, states the study.
Overall, 199 unique adulterants were detected in the MDMA supply across 25 years.
“We confirmed robust correlations in adulterant prevalence trends between drug checking and law enforcement seizure data”, claim the study’s researchers. “While users typically expected alleged MDMA samples to contain only MDMA, more than half of the submitted MDMA samples were misrepresented in some manner. Despite high levels of misrepresentation, MDMA quality has stabilized at relatively high levels in recent years.”
Click here for more information on this study.
