News release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday 25th September 2008

The biggest problem with ecstasy is that it's illegal

On Friday 26th of September the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) will conduct public hearings as part of its review of the classification of ecstasy. Previous comments suggest that ACMD will in all likelihood recommend ecstasy be downgraded from Class A to Class B. Whilst Vernon Coaker MP, the Government's drug spokesperson, has made it abundantly clear (in his evidence to the Science and Technology Select Committee in 2006), that whatever the evidence, the Government would not change its classification.

A Transform spokesperson said:

“The ecstasy review will produce little more than posturing on all sides. Given that the Government overruled the Council on cannabis classification, the entire exercise is doomed before it has begun. The Council's time would be far better spent reviewing the harms caused by criminalising drugs in the first place.

“From Transform's perspective any reduction in unjust criminal penalties for consenting drug users is a positive step. But we remain deeply concerned that regardless of alphabetic classification, ecstasy will remain illegal, its users will still be subject to serious criminal sanctions, and the control of its production and supply will remain in the hands of unregulated criminal profiteers supplying pills and powders of unknown strength made with unknown ingredients .

"The Council's job is to reduce the health and social harms associated with the misuse of drugs. It is of significant concern that the Advisory Council is using a system of classification that was derided comprehensively by the Science and Technology Select Committee less than two years ago.

“There is no evidence that punitive law and its enforcement has anything other than, at best, a marginal impact on levels of drug use or misuse. The prohibitionist regime is unique in the public health field in deploying criminal sanctions to reduce social and health harms. It is also uniquely ineffective. The major problem with ecstasy isn't that it's classified wrongly, the problem is that it's illegal.”

ENDS

Notes for editors

• Transform's submission to the ACMD ecstasy review
• Transform critique of the classification system in Dugs and Alcohol today
• Science and Technology Select Committee report on the classification system
• 2006 Lancet paper on drug harm ranking

Contact

Danny Kushlick, Head of Policy and Communications 07970 174747
Steve Rolles, Head of Research 07980 213943

About Transform

Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a charitable thinktank that exists to reduce harm and promote sustainable health and wellbeing by bringing about a just, effective and humane system to regulate and control drugs at local, national and international levels.