Deaths from ecstasy usage

[bodbloke]

Has anyone died in the UK from taking ecstasy? Not from poisoned pills or from dehydration, but just from taking a single tablet?

[jay303]

The best research into ecstasy that I have read is a book by Nicholas Saunders called Ecstasy Reconsidered. It was published by the author in 1997 (ISBN 0 9530065 0 6) Saunders states that official statistics put the number of UK deaths per year due to ecstasy as low as six, while the media attribute about twelve. The true number may be higher due to people dying of an indirect effect when the drug was not implicated, or lower due to ecstasy being wrongly blamed. When several drugs are used at the same time, it may not be possible to say which was responsible. Saunders makes the assumption that the true number is between six and twenty. Unfortunately Nicholas Saunders was killed in a car accident in 1998, aged 60. For further information on his research go to www.ecstasy.org

[jillkirby]

Many people have died from taking "E" - although the common conseption is the drug has killed them in the case of Leagha Bates it was drinking to much water that killed her - so basically the drug is the killer although you may be fine your friend may not!

[Danlad]

The chances of dying from a single ecstasy tablet which is pure MDMA (The active ingredient) are immensley slim. The message generally given by the media is completey false. The chances of having a fatal reaction to the drug are about the same one would have from taking an asprin. The drug is currently been use in psyciatric clinics and has proved extremely successful. However, due to the fact it is a designer drug the chances of it been legalised for psychological disorders highly unlikely.

[Danlad]

and just to reitterate on what jillkirby stated above (Many people have died from takin E) which is nonsense as it is very rare to hear of a case where someone dies and if you do it is always a huge thing. To work out the odds of dying from a pill you have to take the number of users and divide it by the number of deaths which is estimated to work out at 600,000 to 1. Just to put things into perspective the chances of a skydiver been killed are 84,000 to 1.

[robbieh]

The amount of people who die after taking ecstasy is slowly increasing every year. The majority of these are people who don;t act cautiously when taking the drug. Basically if people take breaks and sip at water there should be no immediate problems as a result of taking it. Long term problems are open to debate as despite the drug being around for quite some time now, i've personally yet to see any reports of anyone getting ill etc. If this were to happen you sure as hell would have heard of it by now such is the one sided coverage in newspapers today. For example the daily mail regularly prints articles about ecstasy being a killer, but for everyone of these reports that comes out there will be at least another two or so that will say the opposite, but the latter do not get any coverage. Its a risk to take these drugs and a risk thats being taken every weekend, I think better education would help prevent the increasing death rates. The Leah Betts video was supposed to scare people from taking it, this probably worked in many cases, but i would think it was probably more helpful in teaching people to act responsibly. For this reason, I hope that this video is still shown in schools, as there doesn't seem to be many other ways where by this message gets across when all the media just talks about deaths.

[Dr.H.Shipman]

there good for you