Student group aims to challenge ecstasy conceptions

With students back on the campus, activist groups are losing no time trying to push their social agendas and political platforms, and last night, Students for Sensible Drug Policy was the first to the punch.

Over fifty students packed the Benjamin Banneker Room in the Stamp Student Union to attend an event aimed at providing students with reliable, accurate information about the party pill ecstasy.

The event featured a screening of the 2004 documentary Ecstasy Rising, hosted by ABC News reporter Peter Jennings, and a question-and-answer session over Skype with Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies Rick Doblin, who was featured in the film.

The film chronicles the history of ecstasy use, tracing its recreational past to Dallas, Texas, in the late 1980s, through the 1990s rave scene to the government's modern struggles apprehending ecstasy users.

"Nobody really knows where to go for reliable drug information," said junior criminology and criminal justice major Irina Alexander, president of SSDP. "We're not encouraging ecstasy use in any way, but we're trying to give students the resources necessary to make decisions based on fact."

The group plans on continuing its efforts to provide students with accessible information on narcotics by working in conjunction with the University Health Center and lobbying the Student Government Association for a Good Samaritan policy that applies to all drug use.

"Our philosophy is that we don't want people to die in order to learn a lesson," Alexander said. "We think that if people have all the facts about drugs from sources they trust, they can make educated decisions."

However, facts on ecstasy use presented in the film appear shaky at best.

Although many mainstream scientists dispute early claims that ecstasy causes significant brain damage and Parkinson's disease, which led to it being grouped in the same category as cocaine, heroin and marijuana, research still indicates that the short-term effects of ecstasy use can lead to dire consequences in rare cases.

Since ecstasy appeared on the drug scene fairly recently, scientists have had trouble measuring its long term affects, which are still largely unknown.

"There's an element of risk associated in doing everything," said Doblin over a Skype session broadcast live and projected for the group. "You can't approach anything in a cavalier way, especially when you don't know the long-term effects."

Doblin claimed to have used ecstasy over 130 times, and said that he mainly had positive experiences with the drug. He is currently spearheading studies examining possible medicinal uses of ecstasy, including treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder and couple's therapy.

However, both Doblin's testimony and the film made it clear that illegal street ecstasy is almost always laced with other substances, including caffeine, heroin and methamphetamine, which can have severely harmful effects.

hemmati@umdbk.com