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  Ecstacy: Designer Drug or Killer? Hugh Riminton, Reporter: Like all illicit drugs -- but far more than most -- ecstasy fuels two competing mythologies. For many who use it, it is a safe drug: no needles, no smoke, no alcoholic hangovers, no boozy aggression, just sweet reason and euphoric wellbeing. Shaun Heenan: It's like walking into a room full of bliss. That's all it is. Reporter: But for Tony Wood, father of Australia's most famous ecstasy victim, that image is undeserved. Tony Wood: There is no safe way of using this drug -- we've gotta get that message across to our kids. Reporter: The death of a 26-year-old Sydney man a week ago at the Happy Valley Full Moon Festival at Appin on Sydney's south-western fringe has called into question police and political tactics in dealing with the drug. But it is a debate that often disguises the true nature of ecstasy use in Australia and its real -- and sometimes surprising -- dangers. The Happy Valley victim collapsed, it was reported, after taking two or three ecstasy tablets and going without sleep for three straight days. While ecstasy has taken the blame, it is highly likely -- on the evidence of the man's friends -- that other drugs were also involved. For now, we simply don't know. The official toxicology report is still weeks away. Reporter: Whatever the truth about the Happy Valley fatality, some things are clear about ecstasy. It is -- on the evidence available -- Australia's fastest growing illegal drug. Its users are getting younger. Alone among illegal drugs in Australia, its popularity is even stronger with young women than with men. And like all powerful trends, it's propelled and reflected by its own specific media language. Shaun Heenan: First one I tried was probably the best thing I ever done. Felt like just everything in the world was right. I felt relaxed, felt totally open to people, hugging them, kissing them -- doesn't really matter, the limits are sky high what you can do on it. Reporter: 22-year-old Shaun Heenan first tried ecstasy 18 months ago -- he now averages a tablet a week. It is his drug of choice. Heenan: Ecstasy wins all over, totally all round. A hangover from alcohol is five times as bad as the actual comedown you get from ecstasy. Reporter: It's definitely better than alcohol in your view? Heenan: In my opinion it's much better. Reporter: At some risk, but in the name of keeping us better informed, Shaun has agreed to share his insights into the drug that has now been tried by at least 10 percent of Australians between the ages of 14 and 24. Reporter: How popular do you think it is? Heenan: How popular? Well, it's like Friday night football. Everybody's in on it. Reporter: How recent is that? Heenan: Mainly in the last 12 months. I think, like, it was pretty widely used before that, but now it's totally widespread. You find people that 12 months ago would say "oh no I never do that". You look at them now and they're doing it, they're loving it. They don't want to turn back. Paul Dillon, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre: I think we are definitely seeing it on a boom with the younger people. Reporter: Paul Dillon, from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, says ecstasy is being driven on in part by its media notoriety, in part by word of mouth. Dillon: No longer do we just see it at the dance party or a nightclub; it's moved into the local pub, it's moved to the school hall. It's really infiltrated society. It's even being used in the family home, and I think that it's important that people are aware that it is no longer one particular cultural group using it. Wood: I quite honesty wonder where we're heading, because there's a huge supply of ecstasy in Australia now. Reporter: Tony Wood and his wife Angela have become public campaigners against drugs since their daughter Anna, then 15, collapsed outside an inner-Sydney nightclub in 1995. Wood: I remember sitting in Bob Carr's office after our daughter died and he told us that these rave parties would be stopped, these dance parties, if they were going on, they be under control -- but nothing's happened. We keep hearing about good ecstasy and bad ecstasy, but if you want to look at what Anna had, it was good ecstasy, pure -- there was no other ingredient in it. She didn't have any other drug or alcohol in her body and yet it killed her. Her brain had swollen to such an extent that it was pressing down the back of her spinal column and she couldn't get any oxygen to it, so I don't think it's very safe. Reporter: In a time when dire headlines clash with a welter of positive ecstasy messages, Tony Wood has a simple, quiet complaint. Wood: We're not telling kids what these drugs can actually do to them. Reporter: And so today on <I>Sunday</I> we will try to tell, unemotionally, the facts as they are known about ecstasy, although it is a story that is unlikely to satisfy people at either end of the drugs debate... By the standards of drug use, ecstasy is comparatively safe. In 1997 more than 22,000 Australians died from the effects of one drug or another -- 80 percent of them from tobacco. Most of the rest died from alcohol -- either directly or in road accidents. Heroin and other opiates claimed 635 lives. Yet the entire amphetamine class of drugs, which includes ecstasy, accounted for just four deaths. Even allowing for a degree of under-reporting, horse riding, even fishing, is more likely to cause injury or death. But that is not the whole story. Dr Iain MacGregor, Sydney University: I would say that on a scale from one to 10, with maybe cannabis being at one and heroin at ten, it's probably a level four or five in terms of the acute dangers. That is, the dangers that face you here and now if you take the drug. But ecstasy in a way is in a league of its own in terms of those long-term dangers that we know little about. I mean, we're talking about the great unknown here. Reporter: Ecstasy, or to give it its full title; methylene dioxymethylamphetamine, works by flooding the brain with the neural transmitter known as serotonin. It is uniquely effective in producing that result, which brings a powerful sense of empathy and closeness to other people. But there is evidence that these repeated floodings of serotonin ultimately exhaust the serotonin receptors. The brain loses its power to process the transmitter in the normal amounts we need every day to function. Dr Iain MacGregor is a psychopharmacologist at Sydney University. MacGregor: Well there's very good evidence now that there's a short-term depression that accompanies ecstasy use. So if you take an ecstasy tablet on Saturday night, odds on, on Monday or Tuesday you're going to have a lower mood than someone who hasn't taken ecstasy. Of greater concern amongst people who do a lot of ecstasy is that they may have a permanent lowering of mood, and indeed there's emerging data suggesting that people who are heavy users have a higher level of social and psychological problems than people who are non-users. Reporter: Dr MacGregor says research into ecstasy's effects is scant, and Australia should be spending much more money on it. However, early research indicates a possible link between heavy ecstasy use and early onset of senile dementia, the condition that affects memory, thought processes and communication, among other things. MacGregor: What happens with the neural transmitter serotonin is that the levels decline as you age. So that someone who's 70 years old will have naturally lower serotonin in their brain than someone who's 20 years old. The problem that I see if people are taking a lot of ecstasy in their 20s and depleting serotonin in their brain at that time of their life, that may then become more exaggerated and pronounced in its functional effects later on in life. So if you superimpose the damage caused by ecstasy with the natural decline in serotonin with ageing you may get a sort of double whammy that leaves people in a very vulnerable sort of state. Reporter: It is the very opposite of the drug's popular image. Is there a safe level of ecstasy use? MacGregor: I would say until further research is done that it would be very foolish to say that any dose of ecstasy is safe. Think about your brain as a sort of precious organ inside your head that you should be protecting. You're going to need that brain in the future. Reporter: But despite a strong move in Australia towards realistic drug education, such messages run hard up against a culture that thrives -- as youth cultures have always done -- on lampooning such advice. It is because of the pervasive influence of those messages that some people believe strident warnings are counterproductive. Dillon: I think we need to start talking about it realistically and avoid the tabloid sort of headlines, because, essentially, no-one believes us. Reporter: Paul Dillon believes that despite -- or even because of -- the high publicity surrounding casualties, the drug is actually losing its dangerous image. He says the death of Anna Wood coincided with -- and may have prompted -- a rapid doubling in ecstasy use, as people believed their own peer group assessments of the dangers, rather than the media-driven ones. Dillon: Traditionally in the ˆ0s, when people first started using ecstasy, they may have used a quarter or half a tablet, and they were very worried about that. We now interview 15-year-old girls who the first time they ever tried the drug took a whole one, and flushed it down with alcohol. Now I think we have to be very concerned about that change in attitude towards a drug that is, and has, considerable risks. MacGregor: I say if you're going to use the drug, use it in small doses and so only do one tablet at a time, leave, you know, several weeks between the occasions when you're going to do the drug. That will minimise your risk of perhaps damaging your brain as a result. Don't go all weekend taking multiple doses, don't use it intravenously. These are the important messages to get across. Reporter: Long-term brain damage is the least publicised of ecstasy's potential risks. Of the 70 deaths in Britain attributed to ecstasy, most were due to acute overheating and dehydration, often following extended dancing in crowded clubs. Far less common -- but the condition that killed Anna Wood -- is hyponaetremia. As the user follows advice and drinks plenty of water, the drug affects the kidneys, preventing the excretion of fluids. Fluid build-up in the brain can lead to coma and death. The third cause of death is heart failure, usually among users with an undiagnosed pre-existing condition. Ecstasy boosts blood pressure and heart rate. Usually death follows ecstasy bingeing, although some people have died after just one tablet. And all that assumes the drug being bought contains just ecstasy. Reporter: Do you ever worry about precisely what it is you're taking? Heenan: All the time, yeah. You've gotta, I think. Reporter: Because it's mixed in with so many other things? Is that a worry? Heenan: Yeah, yeah ... well, these days you can't tell what it is. Reporter: Shaun Heenan says he has frequently taken drugs sold as ecstasy, but filled with other things. Heenan: These days you'll mostly find little bits of LSD and ketamine, tranquillisers, amphetamines just like speed, um, cocaine. Reporter: But he claims, as in any market, the regular ecstasy user does have consumer "rights" -- of a sort. Heenan: It's like someone buying a box of cereal. If they don't like it they can write away to Kellogg's and say no -- kill it. Reporter: And that's the kind of relationship you can have with your dealer? Heenan: Yeah, well, they've gotta really, otherwise it's gonna be pointless them being there because all they're gonna do is annoy people. Reporter: Given that ecstasy use is so strongly associated with nightclubs, it is inevitable that there are calls for venues like this one to be shut down. But in fact the best of them work with the support and co-operation of the police. It's a sobering thought that if you use recreational drugs you are probably safer in a place like this than almost anywhere else. Simon Page had a man die from drugs in one of his clubs last year. Police didn't shut him down, because they recognise the efforts he goes to to keep his clientele safe. Not only is water free, he keeps paramedics on site, he rigidly bans all drug dealing, handing over the dealers and surveillance videotapes to the police, and he provides chill-out areas to protect against the overheating which remains the greatest health risk. A good nightclub is big business. It can gross $80,000 to $100,000 a night. This club called Home in Sydney is a $10-million investment, one that Simon Page is keen to protect. Reporter: Do you have any idea how many people who come to your nightclubs actually use ecstasy? Simon Page, nightclub owner: I really don't know whether it's two out of 10, five out of 10 or eight out of 10, I just don't know. Reporter: How often do you see people get into real trouble with ecstasy in clubs? Page: Well, I can give quite specifics. You know, with the medical staff at the nightclubs I've owned for the past four years, there have been periods where, say, two weekends in a row we've had to call ambulances. And that has reflected what's been taken, etc. And then there'll be four months where we don't have to call an ambulance. And I think in a year of intensive nightclubbing, with a few thousand people going through each week, it might have been four ambulances. Now to me, that's probably less than the same amount of people at a rugby match or a motor cross or an Easter Show. Reporter: Simon Page believes there is merit to the controversial theory that the New Year celebrations at Sydney's Bondi Beach this year were calmer than normal because ecstasy, rather than alcohol, was the drug of choice. Page: Around 15,000 people attended. There wasn't a lot of violence, there wasn't a lot of drunken behaviour, etc. Ecstasy may have had an element of keeping things calm. Indeed, not skirting that question, certainly I think it has helped people because of the tribal mentality it has engendered at just having more understanding of their fellow man. So that blacks will dance alongside whites, will dance alongside gays with heterosexuals, young and old. And that in itself, taking the drug picture right out of it, I think is a very healthy thing. Reporter: Publicly though, the police will no longer be drawn on that theory. Mick Keelty, Federal Police: It's an unfortunate comment. Reporter: Would it be true, though, that people were in fact calmer, more relaxed because they were taking ecstasy and they were not boozed? Keelty: I'm not qualified to say. Reporter: Ecstasy represents a huge challenge to Australian drug agencies. Its rapid growth has coincided with a bold and radically different policing approach -- one that has passed almost unnoticed. Keelty: We've actually had a sea change in the way we're doing our policing, in the way we're focusing our resources in law enforcement. Reporter: Federal Police Agent Mick Keelty heads the fed's national operations. The sea change he speaks of turns on its head the fundamental basis for drug policing -- no longer chasing the drug from street level up, but from the manufacturer down. Keelty: We've almost been chasing our tails trying to get each and every dealer, and for every dealer that we take out another dealer will pop up. We've gotta get better at it. We've taken our operators offshore. This is a step in law enforcement we've never seen in Australia before -- the ability to do international targeting. And it's producing results. All I can say to you is that the results are speaking for themselves. In the past 12 months we have seized something like 160kg of ecstasy, which has trebled any of the previous total yearly amounts that we've seized. Reporter: Australian Federal police intelligence officers are now either in place, or about to set up, 18 overseas posts, including in Burma, a country run by a military regime with such an abominable human rights record that Australia normally allows only slender official links. About 70% of Australia's ecstasy starts off in Western Europe, mainly the Netherlands, but Asia is quickly steaming into the act. In the last 12 months three tonnes of ecstasy have been seized in Thailand, the same again between China and Burma. Keelty: So production rates are enormous. Reporter: The challenge, says Mick Keelty, is to keep it out of Australia, and that means putting the heat on the crime syndicates themselves. Keelty: What we're aiming at here is to eventually put Australia on the map to those entrepreneurs who are looking at a market place, that the risks associated with bringing it to Australia are much greater than the risks associated with taking it somewhere else. Reporter: But the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre believes there may be dangers if police concentrate too much on targeting ecstasy. Dillon: There's always the danger than when you have a crackdown on a particular drug that you do see greater harm occurring. When you look at the amphetamine situation of the early ‰0s, we had a situation where they came down on the availability of the ingredients to make amphetamines and as a result the purity dropped and users turned from amphetamines to heroin, which of course is not harm reduction but harm maximisation. Reporter: If the aim of the new policing policy is to put the heat on organised crime, the effect also reaches the ordinary ecstasy user. Nowadays the police are simply less interested in people at this end of the food chain. Keelty: Someone in that circumstance is not necessarily a criminal to be dealt with as a criminal -- that person needs to be dealt with in terms of health infrastructure and education infrastructure. I think law enforcement is far keener to see that holistic approach to the problem than 10 years ago when we were only ever interested in the number of people we arrested or the amount of drugs we ever seized. Reporter: In simple terms, drug policing now sees its biggest gains at the wholesale, not the retail, level. Reporter: Isn't there an argument to be made that these clubs should simply be shut down? Keelty: Well I mean, it's the same as alcohol abuse in clubs. Reporter: Alcohol's legal though. Keelty: Alcohol is legal but abuse of alcohol is not legal. The answer is not to shut the clubs down -- the answer is to shut down organised crime's involvement in the supply of the drugs. Reporter: It is a policy with big political risks. Wood: No, the venues should be stopped, that's gotta be stopped. The way we're seeing things now I can see little hope for our youth, the way it's going on, they seem to have been just sacrificed. The policy has gotta be a restrictive drug policy and that's the only way we're gonna save our kids. Reporter: At the top level, however, the police are being anything but defeatist -- maintaining an ultimate aim that some might almost see as quaint given the drug-drenched image of postmodern life. Keelty: The bottom line is that no drug is good for you. And really what we should be aiming at is producing a drug-free generation -- a generation of Australians who say %8I don't want to put anything else into my body unless it's good for me'. Reporter: Isn't it unduly optimistic to think that you can have a drug-free generation? Keelty: If you don't have a goal to aim for, you'll never get there. Page: I think it's an admirable ambition and that it's like, wouldn't it be fantastic if we had a society where no-one over-ate, or no-one over-drank or no one smoked cigarettes. Unfortunately, I don't think that's a realistic stance to take and it could be considered a viable aim if it was realistic. Subjective opinion: I don't think it is. ENDS. Click here for a printer-friendly version. |
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