Exactly. Maybe I'm not putting my point across correctly here. I'm just saying that these guys who are dying are not necessarilly ignorant. Imagine for a second what the social climate must be like for intelligent young people, who know the risks involved with what they are doing, and understand the possible consequences... and still go on to take these drugs.

My other point is that it is not necessarilly the pills alone which have killed them, although I can say with certainty that the quality of pills that can be punted in Scotland right now is awful. A simple reflection of the fact that people here will take anything. The chances are that there was much more than mdma in their system, and as Downwards pointed out I would be very surprised if they actually found traces of MDMA in the body of the young man who died. Pills here have little if any proper MDMA, and haven't done for a while.

I should point out that I haven't once referred this to techno people, or any sort of music/clubbing. The media here will always refer to those who die as "young clubbers". That could mean they occasionally went to their local ritzy club smashed out of their heads and danced about to cheesey euro-pop, but they will still be called clubbers, which is not the definition I think. The deaths of recent years rarely happened in clubs. It's almost always been people at home in a party.

One recent death showed an incredible reaction. A young man at a house party was found to be unconcious after using GHB along with alcohol and possibly various other drugs. A common reaction to GHB is to lose consiousness and slip into a coma like state. His "friends" phoned the emergency services, and then each and every last one of them fled the house. The guy died, but the autopsy showed he had not been dead when the others left the house... they could possibly have saved him.

I wonder how the media presented that one then? Well first of all he was a "young clubber", then they picked up on the fact that some people call GHB liquid ecstasy! So suddenly it was an ecstasy death, which astonished his parents, family and close friends who said "he never took drugs, it was his first time, he was experimenting". Bollocks, the whole ****ing lot.

Anyway, my points drifting again. I'm not saying all those who take drugs are from a disadvantaged social background, but the majority of those that die in Scotland are. They rarely took only ecstasy, their will almost always have been other factors. It would be interesting to note if their has ever been any death recorded which could be contributed 100% to ecstasy.

E and alcohol don't mix. This is well known. So let me suggest a scenario for you. What if...?

Well, what if mdma was the social drug of choice in society, the one everyone took, and alcohol was the underground drug of habit. The one with all the bad media surrounding it (let's remember their are many deaths every year which can be attributed to alcohol).

Re-examine the Leah Betts death in that light. She was doing what many people enjoy every weekend. MDMA, 100% legal (in this scenario) and although their can be problems it's usually with people who don't exorcise some self control, and take responsibly. Her mistake was to use the deadly club drug "alcohol". The "vodka" as this particular "brand" of alcohol is known was given to her by a friend at a party. Leah had never touched alcohol before. It was her first time, and had devastating consequences.

Do you see where I'm coming from here? Used responsibly I think MDMA is like other drugs. It's the people who abuse it and other substances through ignorance or whatever, who end up dead.

The techno people, or middle class as tioneb reffered, tend to not have such a need for escape and have made an informed choice, which I think is their right. They choose to do drugs and tend to do them responsibly. They also therefor tend not to die.

The deaths that are occuring are from people taking dangerous cocktails of alcohol, uppers, downers, and just about anything they can get their hands on.

Did you know that youths in some parts of Glasgow steal the council wheelie bins, put them under bridges and set them alight before going up to the bridge to inhgale the fumes!! And that their was a "drugs" death in Strathclyde this year where a youth, following a craze amongst youngsters, climbed a lamp post, smashed the light and tried to inhale the fumes from the gas tube in the mistaken thought that they would get him high. He slipped and fell to his death on the pavement below.

As I've said, they'll do anything for a buzz here. That includes risking death. :roll: