Consistency would seem to demand either legalizing MDMA (as well as marijuana and possibly other substances), or banning things like common food allergens as well as alcohol and tobacco, which have similar or higher danger levels.

You mean in the hypothetical case where medical safety were the issue? This isn’t medicine, it’s politics and “the war on drugs”.

Mentioning the legality is irrelevant; you seem to be missing the essential point of the article, which is that MDMA is legally restricted absurdly out of proportion to its actual dangers and with total disregard for the opinions of medical experts on the matter. Consistency would seem to demand either legalizing MDMA (as well as marijuana and possibly other substances), or banning things like common food allergens as well as alcohol and tobacco, which have similar or higher danger levels.

i.e., many people have an irrational “illegal drugs = bad” bias with no grounding in fact.

There are some strong peanut allergies out there – but I am inclined to want to see some actual figures. Hand-waving is not very convincing. Usually the dose makes the poision.

Re: It’s my understanding that the leading causes of death where MDMA is involved are not strictly caused by the drug, but by dangerous behaviors engaged in during the altered mental state; that’s a death caused by the drug only in the loosest sense.

Hmm. If you get run over by a car, after mis-judging time and space, or while believing that the whole universe loves you – then you are just as dead as if you die some other way.

The article’s claim that “a much larger percentage of people suffer a fatal acute reaction to peanuts than to MDMA.” in the context of one peanut is unreferenced – and strikes me as pretty dubious, looking at the stats I have seen.

My action would probably be dominated by concerns of legality and personal safety. Acute reactions are too rare to be worth considering – but there does seem to be some risk of making an enemy by feeding the MDMA. Also, could you be sued? If you feed the peanut, what happens to the MDMA? Are you left in posession of a Schedule 1 substance? Eeek!

In general, someone allergic enough to risk death will get a sufficiently strong reaction from even far less than a single nut. This is why food packaging will mention if there was shared equipment with peanut products; even dust can be lethal.

And again, the only reason the numbers are that low is that it is comparatively easy to treat the allergic reaction before the point of fatality.

“UK death figures from “MDMA (‘ecstasy’) – from “A review of its harms and classification under the Misuse of Drugs Act”:

“Data from the np-SAD for the period 1997 to 2006 recorded that MDMA was implicated in a mean of 50 deaths per year and around 10 where it was considered the sole drug (Rogers et al., 2009).”

It’s my understanding that the leading causes of death where MDMA is involved are not strictly caused by the drug, but by dangerous behaviors engaged in during the altered mental state; that’s a death caused by the drug only in the loosest sense.

From all the information I can find, the direct toxicity of the drug is relatively mild and it requires substantially more than a single typical dose to risk direct danger from the toxicity, and to my knowledge there’s no evidence of long-term effects except possibly from heavy, chronic usage.

In other words, giving a person a single dose of pure MDMA probably isn’t going to do squat to them in the long run, whereas there is a nontrivial percentage of the population who will unquestionably die from a single peanut without immediate medical intervention.

That is the figure sometimes given for the total annual US peanut deaths – not the deaths after eating one peanut.

UK death figures from “MDMA (‘ecstasy’) – from “A review of its harms and classification under the Misuse of Drugs Act”:

“Data from the np-SAD for the period 1997 to 2006 recorded that MDMA was implicated in a mean of 50 deaths per year and around 10 where it was considered the sole drug (Rogers et al., 2009).”

A smaller country, and how many people eat peanuts compared to how many eat MDMA? What case supports peanuts being more dangerous – even if fatality is the only harm being considered?

Probably far more people than have died from a single dose of pure MDMA. Somewhere on the order of 50-100 people a year, if memory serves me. Statistically, if you take a random American about whom you know nothing, feeding them the peanut is indeed more dangerous, on average.

And yes, the anaphylactic shock from eating even a single peanut is decisively lethal to people with serious peanut allergies. The main reason people don’t die particularly often is that the reaction is apparent within seconds, takes the better part of an hour to reach the point of being lethal, and medication to suppress the histamine response is widely available.

As to why peanuts are as common as they are, allergies as a whole have become, and are becoming, dramatically more common in industrialized nations for as yet unknown reasons. A popular explanation is that this is caused by excessively sterile environments for children but I don’t know how well proven that theory is.

The drug that receives the most medical attention is probably heroin — mostly due to its many complications — infection (AIDS, endocardititis), chance for treatable overdose, and high addictive potential. Then probably cocaine — addiction potential and chance for complications (heart attack).

People who make national drug policy DO NOT represent the consensus of medicine in any way whatsoever. These positions are made on the basis of politics — and rarely medical considerations. Alcohol and cigarettes cause significantly more harm than marijuana and ecstasy — and I would bet the overwhelming majority of physicians would agree.

…and what about the concept of “risk aversion”?

Peanuts are a low-risk food, whereas if you choose to feed a stranger MDMA, there is a high probability that they will be very cross with you – not least of all because of the well-documented “brain-damage” issue.