Official argues for ecstasy safeguards
B.C.’s top health official says taking pure ecstasy can be “safe” when consumed responsibly by adults, despite warnings by police in Alberta and British Columbia about the dangers of the street drug after a rash of deaths.
Dr. Perry Kendall asserts the risks of MDMA, the pure substance originally synonymous with ecstasy, are overblown, and that its lethal dangers only arise when the man-made chemical is polluted by money-hungry gangs who cook it up.
That’s why the chief provincial health officer is suggesting the risks of black market MDMA might be mitigated, for example if it were legalized and potentially sold through licensed, government-run stores where the product is strictly regulated from assembly line to checkout.
He took issue with a story by the Canadian Press on Thursday that characterized him as advocating legalization, saying that isn’t his position.
“I am quite a strong critic of prohibition because I don’t think it keeps drugs out of the hands of vulnerable people and I don’t think it does much to reduce harmful use and I think it has other harmful effects like putting billions of dollars into the hands of criminal enterprises,” Kendall said in an interview Thursday.
However, he said he is not advocating legalization as the solution, but rather, there should be a discussion about ways of doing things other than the current losing war on drugs.
“There’s perhaps a subtle distinction here,” he said at a news conference to clarify his views.
“I do think that we should be looking at that approach for current illicit psychoactive drugs because I think we can come up with a better mechanism of control. What I did not say was that I was advocating for MDMA to be legalized at the present time and distributed through government stores. I said if it were to be legalized, then it should be strictly regulated and one way of doing that would be through strictly controlled government exits. There’s a difference.”
Just like the growing chorus for marijuana legalization, Kendall believes, crushing the dirty ecstasy-saturated black market and its associated violence requires an evidence-based strategy that revolves around public health.
“(If) you knew what a safe dosage was, you might be able to buy ecstasy like you could buy alcohol from a government-regulated store,” Kendall said in an interview.
He posits that usage rates would decrease.
Several studies agree the pure substance is not so “ominous,” including research by a Harvard psychiatrist that dispels more damning earlier work.
Kendall was asked whether ecstasy, after further study around correct dosage and in a setting involving strict controls, could be safe. “Absolutely,” he responded. “We accept the fact that alcohol, which is inherently dangerous, is a product over a certain age that anybody can access.
“So I don’t think the issue is a technical one of how we would manage that. The issue is a political, perceptual one.”
He does not advocate promoting the drug for recreational use.
At least 16 people from B.C. to Saskatchewan have died since last July from a tainted batch of ecstasy they obtained from criminal dealers, the only way an average person can acquire the drug in Canada.
I am quite a strong critic of prohibition. DR. PERRY KENDALL