9 ms·

Non-profit produced MDMA 'ecstasy' and psychedelics

140 points by tobiasgw 12y ago

aheilbut 12y ago
They want people to give them $1M for empty boxes from the future? Are they on drugs? It might well be a good idea to study the therapeutic applications of these compounds more, or to change the laws. But the bottlenecks are in laws and in actually establishing the medical utility, not in synthesis. If they want to solicit donations for advocacy, fine.. but there are plenty more noble causes worthy of support. Tying it to manufacturing drugs is just bizarre.
- vilhelm_s 12y ago
  This does go towards establishing medical utility and changing the laws. They say they will use the money to distribute psilocybin for free to researchers running medical trials, to develop protocols and applications for a medical trial in Oslo, and for general campaigning.
tariqr 12y ago
If I understand this correctly, the recipient (backer) is responsible for obtaining necessary legal documents and approvals for medical use. They might just end up putting a lot of people in danger of possession of drugs if this is not handled properly. But +1 for looking into psychedelics, specifically MDMA, with an objective lens and clearly demystifying their position in the drug world.
- yebyen 12y ago
  Unless I missed it, nowhere on the page does it say the backer is also the recipient. There is no donation level where you get MDMA or Psilocybin for yourself, it's all produced and distributed for free (through unspecified channels, but assumedly with some more due diligence and responsibility than just mailing it out indiscriminately to everyone who backs the project.) Looks like you can get a box "from the future" which indicates to me it's concept packaging so you can show you support the cause, not an actual box of drugs.
themartorana 12y ago
This is easy to get behind. Although I have doubts of ever seeing these products on store shelves in the US, one of the things that have kept my personal drug experimentation extremely low is fear of product purity and lack of quality control. It's easy to show how terrible the War on Drugs has been. I'm still against legalizing the worst of drugs like meth and heroin. But marijuana and LSD, other plant-based psychedelics, I'm mostly for. Keeping drugs under ground and in the shadows funds Mexican drug cartels and puts the lives of millions at risk, while causing medical patients continuous, unnecessary suffering. Legalization and good QC is the best thing we could hope for.
- eddieh 12y ago
  > I'm still against legalizing the worst of drugs like meth and heroin. It's funny you're against legalizing those two drugs. I take it you're not aware that both of the "worst" (whatever that is supposed to mean) drugs are actually legal in one form or another. Methamphetamine is available with a prescription and heroin/opioids are generally available with a prescription as well.
  - neikos 12y ago
    I am sure by 'worst' he meant the relation between active dose and lethal dose, which IIRC are not so far apart.
    - eddieh 12y ago
      If that is the measure of "worst" then alcohol, tylenol, nutmeg, and dextromethorphan containing cough medicine should be demonized too.
      - neikos 12y ago
        I'm all for Alcohol being less available, Paracetamol isn't my cup of tea either and discourage its use, a search for Nutmeg has brought nothing that seems to be supportive of it being overly dangerous, and a quick google for dextromethorphan also seeems to be inconclusive (wikipedia cites adverse effects in doses up to 75 the usual dose, so unless one can buy it in extra large capsules I don't think it is relevant). I have a hard time believing that you were serious about the latter two examples, given what I found.
PeterWhittaker 12y ago
The folks involved did an AMA recently: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2ywf4a/science_ama_series_we_are_teri_krebs_p%C3%A5l%C3%B8rjan/ http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2ywf4a/science_ama_...
probably_wrong 12y ago
I have several problems with this: First of all, creating an account just to submit a commercial link? That should be a bannable offense, unless we are cool with marketers selling their stuff here. Second, I'm fairly sure this campaign goes against Indiegogo's term of use. I would expect an actual ban there. Third, and more to the point: I could get behind such a campaign if the money went first towards legal access and second to production. The campaign may use as many nice words as they want, but ultimately, they are not putting their money where their mouth is. They "will support EmmaSofia's work to legalize recreational use"... after collecting a nice 300-600K, and only if people pay 400K extra for it. Call me skeptic. And all of that without getting into the legal aspect of it, which I don't like either.
- tobiasgw 12y ago
  I just want to clarify that I'm not affiliated with this project what so ever, I just found it interesting and worth posting here. And yes, it's my first submission.
- user_0001 12y ago
  > unless we are cool with marketers selling their stuff here. Do you not see this multiple times throughout each and every day? People replying to threads with a small comment then squeezing in the link to their site "and we are http://blahblah.com http://blahblah.com have done this...." then paragraphs about their product
- true_religion 12y ago
  To be far this is HackerNews, a discussion board backed by a business accelerator program and home to startups and VCs alike. If there's anywhere that should be okay with commercial promotion its here. And that's what I like about the place. No where else on the internet can you find people at the ground level, promoting themselves and engaging in discussion. If you want to ask hard questions about the product, its hard to do it to a billboard in time square, but a lot easier to do against someone who's promoting it on HN.
  - probably_wrong 12y ago
sheeba37 12y ago
Have you or do you plan to do any research into so-called MDMA comedowns / depression which is commonly experienced for a few days after taking it? Does the existence of these comedowns cause you to be hesitant / cautious in any way when recommending MDMA to treat PTSD? What advice would you give to patients or test subjects to prepare them for, or to mitigate comedowns?
igrekel 12y ago
Now, does supporting this can make you prosecutable for financing a criminal organization under anti-gang law? I am asking this seriously.
digitalzombie 12y ago
I think there was a documentary on knock off MDMA which the Chinese and other countries are making and selling as x.t.c. but are actually Bath Salt.
roel_v 12y ago
I'm not sure what the goal of this project is. It seems to be to produce psilocybin and MDMA, but it fails to mention why this would be necessary, or why they'd need any money to do so at all (apart from the modest cost of precursor). I'll admit that I don't know much about synthetic psilocybin manufacturing, so I'm talking about MDMA mostly. (but until last year, you could buy 'only add water' growing sets for shrooms in smart shops here (=Netherlands), so how hard can it be?) Either way, there are many syntheses known, most of them (although I'm not a chemist, so I don't have first hand knowledge) available to chemists with very modest understandings of chemistry and rudimentary equipment needs. I'd imagine they already have labs in which they can produce high quality product using high-yield syntheses. With the right paperwork (which you'd need to get access to this project's product), any researcher could just as easily get access to precursor and make exactly what they want (be it MDMA, MDA, MDME, or any other variation Shulgin described, or invented afterwards by others). Plus it's easier to get licensed for owning e.g. saffrole than it is to import MDMA! So maybe he's saying that they can do it cheaper? I doubt so, or at least I doubt that the price difference would be relevant. MDMA available underground in Europe has been more pure and cheaper than it ever was before; a gram of pure MDMA costs 20 euros retail (that's about 10 doses) if you're buying from the most expensive guy you can find. If you buy by the 100 grams, you can get it for half or a quarter of that price. So we're talking less than a euro per dose here - at a worst case estimate. After taking everything into account, I have a hard time imagining cost being a factor here (the low price on the underground market being a fascinating topic itself here - how can these clandestine manufacturing gangs make real money on their operations, after counting for the high cost of doing business?) (and before anyone says that you don't know the quality of what you buy on the black market, these people are professional pharmacologists, they could easily check quality of a sample - until a few years ago, you could get your pills checked at raves for free FFS). Now if they're looking for a million dollars to fund drug legalization work, then fine, that's a worthy goal in itself - but that's listed only in passing in the project. So the only conclusion left is that this project is a PR stunt, where they're using a headline grabbing project description to fund much less exotic advocacy work. (my comments in this thread make it seem that I have first hand knowledge about these things, but it's been well over 15 years since I last used or even saw illegal drugs. I just have a an interest in the economics and law of underground (drug) markets, and I read case law, reports from our equivalent of the DoJ, papers from academic researchers and government drug monitoring agencies to keep up to date. Hey, other people collect stamps.)
sadsgasdsadsad 12y ago
test

140 points by tobiasgw 12y ago

They want people to give them $1M for empty boxes from the future? Are they on drugs? It might well be a good idea to study the therapeutic applications of these compounds more, or to change the laws. But the bottlenecks are in laws and in actually establishing the medical utility, not in synthesis. If they want to solicit donations for advocacy, fine.. but there are plenty more noble causes worthy of support. Tying it to manufacturing drugs is just bizarre.

vilhelm_s 12y ago
This does go towards establishing medical utility and changing the laws. They say they will use the money to distribute psilocybin for free to researchers running medical trials, to develop protocols and applications for a medical trial in Oslo, and for general campaigning.

tariqr 12y ago

If I understand this correctly, the recipient (backer) is responsible for obtaining necessary legal documents and approvals for medical use. They might just end up putting a lot of people in danger of possession of drugs if this is not handled properly. But +1 for looking into psychedelics, specifically MDMA, with an objective lens and clearly demystifying their position in the drug world.

yebyen 12y ago
Unless I missed it, nowhere on the page does it say the backer is also the recipient. There is no donation level where you get MDMA or Psilocybin for yourself, it's all produced and distributed for free (through unspecified channels, but assumedly with some more due diligence and responsibility than just mailing it out indiscriminately to everyone who backs the project.) Looks like you can get a box "from the future" which indicates to me it's concept packaging so you can show you support the cause, not an actual box of drugs.

themartorana 12y ago

This is easy to get behind. Although I have doubts of ever seeing these products on store shelves in the US, one of the things that have kept my personal drug experimentation extremely low is fear of product purity and lack of quality control. It's easy to show how terrible the War on Drugs has been. I'm still against legalizing the worst of drugs like meth and heroin. But marijuana and LSD, other plant-based psychedelics, I'm mostly for. Keeping drugs under ground and in the shadows funds Mexican drug cartels and puts the lives of millions at risk, while causing medical patients continuous, unnecessary suffering. Legalization and good QC is the best thing we could hope for.

eddieh 12y ago
> I'm still against legalizing the worst of drugs like meth and heroin. It's funny you're against legalizing those two drugs. I take it you're not aware that both of the "worst" (whatever that is supposed to mean) drugs are actually legal in one form or another. Methamphetamine is available with a prescription and heroin/opioids are generally available with a prescription as well.
- neikos 12y ago
  I am sure by 'worst' he meant the relation between active dose and lethal dose, which IIRC are not so far apart.
  - eddieh 12y ago
    If that is the measure of "worst" then alcohol, tylenol, nutmeg, and dextromethorphan containing cough medicine should be demonized too.
    - neikos 12y ago
      I'm all for Alcohol being less available, Paracetamol isn't my cup of tea either and discourage its use, a search for Nutmeg has brought nothing that seems to be supportive of it being overly dangerous, and a quick google for dextromethorphan also seeems to be inconclusive (wikipedia cites adverse effects in doses up to 75 the usual dose, so unless one can buy it in extra large capsules I don't think it is relevant). I have a hard time believing that you were serious about the latter two examples, given what I found.

PeterWhittaker 12y ago

The folks involved did an AMA recently: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2ywf4a/science_ama_series_we_are_teri_krebs_p%C3%A5l%C3%B8rjan/ http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/2ywf4a/science_ama_...

probably_wrong 12y ago

I have several problems with this: First of all, creating an account just to submit a commercial link? That should be a bannable offense, unless we are cool with marketers selling their stuff here. Second, I'm fairly sure this campaign goes against Indiegogo's term of use. I would expect an actual ban there. Third, and more to the point: I could get behind such a campaign if the money went first towards legal access and second to production. The campaign may use as many nice words as they want, but ultimately, they are not putting their money where their mouth is. They "will support EmmaSofia's work to legalize recreational use"... after collecting a nice 300-600K, and only if people pay 400K extra for it. Call me skeptic. And all of that without getting into the legal aspect of it, which I don't like either.

tobiasgw 12y ago
I just want to clarify that I'm not affiliated with this project what so ever, I just found it interesting and worth posting here. And yes, it's my first submission.
user_0001 12y ago
> unless we are cool with marketers selling their stuff here. Do you not see this multiple times throughout each and every day? People replying to threads with a small comment then squeezing in the link to their site "and we are http://blahblah.com http://blahblah.com have done this...." then paragraphs about their product
true_religion 12y ago
To be far this is HackerNews, a discussion board backed by a business accelerator program and home to startups and VCs alike. If there's anywhere that should be okay with commercial promotion its here. And that's what I like about the place. No where else on the internet can you find people at the ground level, promoting themselves and engaging in discussion. If you want to ask hard questions about the product, its hard to do it to a billboard in time square, but a lot easier to do against someone who's promoting it on HN.
- probably_wrong 12y ago

sheeba37 12y ago

Have you or do you plan to do any research into so-called MDMA comedowns / depression which is commonly experienced for a few days after taking it? Does the existence of these comedowns cause you to be hesitant / cautious in any way when recommending MDMA to treat PTSD? What advice would you give to patients or test subjects to prepare them for, or to mitigate comedowns?

igrekel 12y ago

Now, does supporting this can make you prosecutable for financing a criminal organization under anti-gang law? I am asking this seriously.

digitalzombie 12y ago

I think there was a documentary on knock off MDMA which the Chinese and other countries are making and selling as x.t.c. but are actually Bath Salt.

roel_v 12y ago

I'm not sure what the goal of this project is. It seems to be to produce psilocybin and MDMA, but it fails to mention why this would be necessary, or why they'd need any money to do so at all (apart from the modest cost of precursor). I'll admit that I don't know much about synthetic psilocybin manufacturing, so I'm talking about MDMA mostly. (but until last year, you could buy 'only add water' growing sets for shrooms in smart shops here (=Netherlands), so how hard can it be?) Either way, there are many syntheses known, most of them (although I'm not a chemist, so I don't have first hand knowledge) available to chemists with very modest understandings of chemistry and rudimentary equipment needs. I'd imagine they already have labs in which they can produce high quality product using high-yield syntheses. With the right paperwork (which you'd need to get access to this project's product), any researcher could just as easily get access to precursor and make exactly what they want (be it MDMA, MDA, MDME, or any other variation Shulgin described, or invented afterwards by others). Plus it's easier to get licensed for owning e.g. saffrole than it is to import MDMA! So maybe he's saying that they can do it cheaper? I doubt so, or at least I doubt that the price difference would be relevant. MDMA available underground in Europe has been more pure and cheaper than it ever was before; a gram of pure MDMA costs 20 euros retail (that's about 10 doses) if you're buying from the most expensive guy you can find. If you buy by the 100 grams, you can get it for half or a quarter of that price. So we're talking less than a euro per dose here - at a worst case estimate. After taking everything into account, I have a hard time imagining cost being a factor here (the low price on the underground market being a fascinating topic itself here - how can these clandestine manufacturing gangs make real money on their operations, after counting for the high cost of doing business?) (and before anyone says that you don't know the quality of what you buy on the black market, these people are professional pharmacologists, they could easily check quality of a sample - until a few years ago, you could get your pills checked at raves for free FFS). Now if they're looking for a million dollars to fund drug legalization work, then fine, that's a worthy goal in itself - but that's listed only in passing in the project. So the only conclusion left is that this project is a PR stunt, where they're using a headline grabbing project description to fund much less exotic advocacy work. (my comments in this thread make it seem that I have first hand knowledge about these things, but it's been well over 15 years since I last used or even saw illegal drugs. I just have a an interest in the economics and law of underground (drug) markets, and I read case law, reports from our equivalent of the DoJ, papers from academic researchers and government drug monitoring agencies to keep up to date. Hey, other people collect stamps.)

sadsgasdsadsad 12y ago

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