Fame at last!

Today - much to my amazement - I had an e-mail printed in the Daily Mail today. Amazement, because I sent it (on Monday 9 February) in response to their continued less-than-neutral coverage of the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs's then pending reappriasal of the current legal status of MDMA (Ecstasy):

"Unsurprisingly, Melanie Phillips scoffs at the by-no-means-new comparison between the risk of death from taking Ecstasy, and that of horse-riding, but is it so absurd?

For many years, the "official" estimate for Ecstasy has been half a million instances of use each week (sometimes misreported as "half a million pills taken" - although it has been suggested that the real figure is at least four times as high). The total number of deaths in 2006 where Ecstasy was mentioned on death certifcates was 48, but the number of where it was the only drug mentioned was 26 (i.e. in 22 cases, other drugs were involved)**. Assuming half a million uses a week puts the risk of any one instance of use being linked to a death at between 1 in a million (Ecstasy alone) and 1.85 in a million (Ecstasy plus at least one other drug). Deaths from Ecstasy alone are inariably due to hyperthermia - overheating as a result of dancing in hot venues for prologed periods - or, in a small number of cases (such as Leah Betts), water-intoxication from drinking too much in an attempt to combat the same overheating. Both are avoidable and therefore inherently more attributable to ignorance on the part of users than Ecstasy itself.

Figures for horse-riding fatalities are hard to come by, but one study in 1999 showed that over a five year period there were 62 deaths for 39 million participations - a fatality risk of 1.59 in a million for any single event, clearly comparable to Ecstasy. In comparison, fishing, swimming/diving, and boating were all riskier than horse-riding.

The simple reality is that in purely numerical terms, Ecstasy is not particularly deadly, and is arguably as safe or safer than many legal and socially-acceptable hobbies and pastimes. Yes, it can and does kill unpredictably in a tiny minority of cases, but then so do peanuts. Some people develop mental problems after using Ecstasy, but the same can be said of alcohol. Ecstasy use may cause damage to certain internal organs, but so do cigarettes and alcohol.

Most importantly, the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of people who will use Ecstasy this weekend - and every other weekend - will not see any other users around them suffering any ill effects at all, let alone fatal ones. In the face of users' own personal experience and observations, government and media propaganda that relies on exagerrating the fatal risk as the primary reason for not taking Ecstasy is inherently flawed and doomed to failure."

As was widely expected, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith chose emotion and playing to the political gallery - rather than the results of scientific investigation - and ignored the Council's recommendation that MDMA be downgraded to Class B.