Teens feel MDMA ‘safe’
MDMA is now so normalised among Australia’s youth that teens as young as 15 are double-dropping caps while others think the drug is as safe as paracetamol.
Despite at least six drug-related deaths at festivals in the past year, messages about the dangers of MDMA are not cutting through. Combined with a binge-mentality around the drug, experts are bracing for another dangerous summer.
Ahead of the festival season, The Ripple Effect asked young people what they thought about MDMA and how they were using it.
Disturbingly, most considered it safe, with one young user describing it as just “like taking a Panadol”.
Another man, 27, said he usually took eight caps at festivals, and said last summer’s deaths would not change his use.
“They’re pretty niche stories,” he told The Ripple Effect. “The people doing those (drugs) were not acting safely.”
An 18-year-old woman said MDMA was now so common at parties, her male friends were taking five or six caps at a time. “Everyone’s pretty reliable on it,” she added.
All who used MDMA at festivals said policing and sniffer dogs wouldn’t stop them taking the drug or smuggling it in.
Bought through friends or via social media networks, MDMA, the main ingredient in ecstasy, has never been easier to get.
“I’m from The Shire (Sutherland Shire, NSW), and honestly, you can get it anywhere,” Maddie, 18, said outside a festival this month.
“I know so many dealers and I don’t even do drugs. I know people from my school who started in Year 10.”
The Drug and Alcohol Research Training Australia’s Paul Dillon said the normalisation of MDMA among young people was extremely concerning, and it started in high school.
A drug educator with more than 25 years’ experience, Mr Dillon talks to students around the country and said it was confronting how many refused to acknowledge the risks.
“Kids don’t call it ecstasy anymore, they’re convinced they’re taking MDMA and that perception of MDMA as safe among the very young is really concerning,” he said.
The pill testing debate had further confused teens, he said, with some now thinking if a test found MDMA present, a pill or cap was safe.
“There’s this kind of bravado about it,” he added.
With “super-strength” MDMA detected in the UK in the past year, and likely to be circulating in Australia this summer, the blase attitude towards the drug is alarming.
Illicit drug use among 18 to 24-year-olds fell from 37 to 28 per cent from 2001 to 2016, according to the Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs report, and about 11 per cent of Australians over 14 had used ecstasy.
But teenage MDMA use is worrying. Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and
Drug figures, surveyed from 20,000 high school students, found 6 per cent of 16 to 17year-olds had tried the drug in 2014. By 2017, it was 10 per cent. At 15, one in 20 had tried ecstasy/MDMA and by 17, one in six males and one in 10 females.
“We’re now in 2019 and my fear is it’s grown even more than that,” Mr Dillon said.
“It’s concerning seeing more and more school-based young people way down to Year 10s, 15-year-olds, who are using ecstasy and MDMA, not just once in while, but regularly,” he said.
The binge mentality prevalent in Australia’s drinking culture was also evident among young MDMA users, with young women in Year 11 and 12 worried about the “phenomenal amounts” of the drug male friends were taking.