Today, ecstasy can be found almost anywhere. It’s considered the world’s number one party drug – a drug that has been linked to 21 deaths in western Canada of late, including 17-year-old Cheryl McCormack.
“Her eyes were rolled back, her lips were clenched and blue… and she was just shaking,” says Shawna McCormack, Cheryl’s older sister. “We took her into the hospital Tuesday at about 2:30 in the morning, and Thursday morning about 10:25 she died.”
Part of the reason Alberta and BC experienced an epidemic of overdoses was because a new chemical, called PMMA, was laced into the pills.
“With the toxicology, we had a bunch of information coming back that a number of cases seemed to be associated to ecstasy overdoses that involved PMMA,” says Staff Sergeant Mike Bossley of the Calgary Police Service. “It really is significantly more lethal than other forms of ecstasy; we’ve seen a lot of deaths specifically associated to PMMA.”
The lethal chemical was in the pills that Cheryl McCormack took.
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“She had the PMMA in her. And that’s what killed her; and that’s why the other girls were okay, because they took the same amount, but they didn’t have that in theirs,” says Shawna.
But police say no matter what’s in the pill, taking ecstasy is like playing Russian roulette.
“PMMA may have been in those pills and perhaps at the end of the day, the coroner may say that PMMA was a contributing factor to the death. But we’ve also have 11 deaths in this province of ecstasy alone,” says RCMP officer Scott Rintoul.
Finding out what’s actually in the pill is the job of Health Canada chemist, Richard Laing.
“We’ve seen operations where they’ve actually added paint to tablets, added glitter to tablets,” he says. “Those kinds of things have inherent hazards that I wouldn’t know what they are on an unsuspecting individual. Certainly, I wouldn’t want to be eating paint.”
There is no way to know exactly what is in an ecstasy tablet, but in most cases the main component is MDMA. Still, there is nothing to stop “cooks” from substituting chemicals to make the drug.
“You can die,” says Staff Sergeant Mike Bossley. “Whether it’s got PMMA in it or not, you don’t know what you’re getting in the pill.”
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