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Ecstasy: No joy for rainforests
Ecstasy’s no friend of your brain over the long term — and also no friend of the environment.
Mon, Mar 09 2009 at 10:42 PM
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Good thing the rave scene’s dead — to most people, anyway (or have I just gotten old?). Ecstasy’s no friend of your brain over the long term — and also no friend of the environment.
Ecstasy’s connection to enviro-destruction: Ecstasy, a.k.a. methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA, is usually created with a precursor chemical — Sassafras oil. That oil can be produced from the roots of the Mreah Prew Phnom tree, a rare plant that could go extinct. Said tree grows in Cambodian rain forests, where illegal distilleries have been chopping down those trees to make the oil — and cutting down other trees to use as fuel.
According to the Guardian UK: “FFI [Fauna and Flora International, an international environmental agency] was alarmed that the rate of the illegal production of the ‘ecstasy oil’ could have wiped out the Mreah Prew Phnom tree within five years …. Surrounding trees are also felled to fuel fires for the distillation, threatening one of the last great rainforests in Southeast Asia. Rivers are polluted by the effluent from the oil production.”
So — if the fact that ecstasy could cause brain damage — leading to “depression, anxiety, memory disturbance and psychiatric disorders,” according to the BBC — didn’t convince you to steer clear of the drug, perhaps your love of the rain forest will.
Photo by boodoo
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I wonder how long and deep the Mreah Prew Phnom tree must grow for it to be ripe for the felling/harvesting? I have just read another blog where a west virginian lady remembers enjoying sassafras tea as a girl. She said they were much more plentiful then.
One who cannot hex cannot heal.
....
These illegal activities are a result of the drug black-market. Environmentalists should demand controlled, regulated, environmentally-safe production of all drugs.
The harms have been exaggerated, see latest news BBC 2009:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7882708.stm
Research On Ecstasy Is Clouded By Errors - New York Times, 2003
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07EFDE113AF931A35751C1A9659C8B63
Ecstasy Rising, ABC News, 2004:
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1564288654365150131
i'm a hardcore environmentalist, and would really like to have serious journalism and facts about rainforest destruction rather than this spreading of misinformation.
likewise, the old ""study" which was published on bbc in 1998 which was dr ricuarte's bogus research has since been invalidated because the data he presented was in fact from mislabeled methamphetamine used in the study, rather than mdma, quite different. do your research.