“Yeah hi, could I get some Panadol, a couple packets of Fisherman’s Friends, some condoms and, oh yeah, some ding dangs. Thanks.” – you at the pharmacist in the future, maybe.
One of Australia’s leading pharmacists and doctors is pushing for the best friend of music festival attendees everywhere, the drug ecstasy, to become legal and sold over-the-counter at your local pharmo, to help quash the damage cause by black market pills.
In a report in The Age today, pharmacist Joshua Donelly and leading doctor Professor David Penington spoke out about the comparitve harmlessness of MDMA (the main ingredient in ecstasy), saying that it caused “negligible” harm to users and people around them.
“Australians are one of the highest consumers of MDMA in the world, yet we resolutely resist exploring the fact that most of the uncommon ill consequences of its use arise from impurities in illicitly manufactured drug and the ‘illicit’, uncontrolled circumstances of its use,” Professor Penington said, before asking anyone if they had any gum.
Although the Australian government says they have no plans to legalise MDMA at the moment, the idea put forward by the pair has its merits, with pharmacists selling government regulated, pure MDMA alongside a discussion of its risks whilst allowing them to advise people with psychiatric illness, for example, to avoid it.
MDMDA is currently ranked far behind alcohol and tobacco on ability to cause harm, coming in at 17th on Britain’s Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs list of 20 with the British government’s former top drug adviser, Professor David Nutt, saying that MDMA was likely to be safer than horse riding.
Although I don’t see this one coming through anytime soon, especially under old mate wet blanket Tones, one can dream of a perfect world where your drugs are safe and cheap and in the aisle marked ‘Party Supplies’. Wait, imagine if we get gay marriage AND legal eccies at the same time! Those weddings gonna GO OFF.
Watch: Danny Brown – Dip
