If you’re anything like me, by 9 p.m. tonight you’ll be dancing your life away to the face-melting bass of RL Grime at the BUKU Music + Art Project in New Orleans.
If you’re anything like the drug-rattled party junkies that “Skins” and “Project X” portray our generation as, you’ll probably partake of MDMA, or “roll on molly,” as the kids call it these days. And you certainly wouldn’t be the only one.
A look at the LSU.Nation Snapchat account on any given day shows a number of people with ecstasy pills, powders and crystals, among other drugs. Sometimes it makes me wonder if all the users of LSU-centered social media are cocaine kingpins.
Let’s be honest, music festivals usually come to one of three conclusions for college students who don’t stay sober.
You either lose your friends because you’re tripping way too hard on acid, you’ve stumbled to the closest dive bar to get even more trashed or you’ve spent the last 20 minutes looking for your car keys because of the three blunts passed throughout the crowd. The keys were in your hand the whole time.
That is, unless you’re like one of the 12 Wesleyan University students hospitalized after taking “molly,” two of which were in critical condition. Local news outlets like NBC Connecticut were quick to title the story as “MDMA overdoses” and let the misinformation of the War on Drugs continue unabated.
Their ignorance of science makes me sad for the future of journalism. Actual MDMA overdoses are few and far between because the lethal dosage is ridiculously high.
Obviously there are no studies demonstrating the lethal dose of MDMA for humans — no ethics committee in their right mind would greenlight that.
What we do have are studies done on rats.
The LD50, or the dosage at which 50 percent of test rats died was around 300 micrograms of MDMA when ingested orally. The average rat weighs less than a pound, so the average human would need about 100 to 150 times the amount of the drug to die from MDMA.
I’m not sure how much molly your homeboy gives you when he comes through town, but drug forums like Bluelight and Erowid, along with reports done for the state of California in the late ’80s tell me that the standard recreational dosage for MDMA is less than 150 micrograms — nowhere near the lethal human dosage.
It’s clear what sent those students to the hospital was whatever cheap research chemical some scummy dealer sold to them as molly, which dealers advertise as pure MDMA. The dumb kids believed their dealer, probably because he was their friend and would never sell them something he thought would hurt them.
That’s a bad idea because your friend probably doesn’t know what he’s got. In the documentary “What’s in my Baggie?” the aptly named Bunk Police go around a music festival testing molly with a reagent to figure out whether it actually contains MDMA.
Spoiler alert — there’s little truth to the claim that molly is “pure MDMA.” Most of the concertgoers had synthetic cathinone, known popularly as bath salts, that few people would ingest intentionally. They also had no idea of what they had.
Media outlets across the country raised hell last year when dozens of people were hospitalized at an Avicii concert in Boston. Concertgoers blamed the lack of air conditioning in the venue and exorbitant prices for water as contributing to the overheating and dehydration that forced people into the hospital.
Many of these stories are overblown and sensationalized so parents can claim the youth are being corrupted by something other than their bad parenting.
Hospitalizations and deaths definitely are problems, but legislative attempts to address them haven’t just taken the fun out of live electronic music festivals. They’ve made it even harder for festivals, clubs and other hotspots for drug activity to keep their patrons safe.
Enter the RAVE Act — a cringe-worthy sounding piece of legislation that lives up to its name. It was sponsored by none other than Vice President and creepy uncle of the White House Joe Biden while he was still groping women in the Senate in 2003.
The law strengthens already stringent penalties on simple possession of ecstasy, but that’s not the worst part. The statute broadens already established crack house laws, levying $250,000 in civil fines and up to 20 years in prison for managing a place where drug use occurs.
With that kind of a threat, it’s no surprise promoters want to seem like they have zero tolerance for drug use on their premises. It’s the reason why DanceSafe, who provide on-site drug testing and harm-reduction literature to anybody who wants it, was banned from Mad Decent Block Party in Philadelphia despite assurances from head honcho Diplo that he was working with them.
Harm reduction is simple and easy. Last year, BUKU had stations hooked up to the city water supply where people could fill up water bottles and CamelBaks. Every person there was ranting and raving about how this was the best idea it’s ever had.
Legislators need to get out of the way so people and organizations can make responsible decisions about drug use instead of being in the dark.
And remember, don’t take the brown acid.
James Richards is a 20-year-old mass communication sophomore from New Orleans. You can reach him on Twitter @JayEllRichy.