MDMA influences the activity of neurotransmitters—chemical messengers responsible for transmitting signals in the brain. Primarily, it depends on the individual’s metabolism, the amount of MDMA taken, frequency of use, and the user’s overall health. These metabolites are chemicals produced as the body processes MDMA, which linger in the system, offering a window into recent drug use. For MDMA, this involves identifying traces of the drug’s metabolites. Drug tests aim to detect the presence of specific substances in the bod

General population surveys in many countries showed that MDMA prevalence was declining from buy mdma peak levels attained in the early to mid-2000s. Data on prevalence of use provide an indication of the structure, location and approximate size of retail MDMA markets in the European Union. Consumers in the Netherlands will typically pay EUR 4.50 per tablet but, as stated above, prices may reach as high as EUR 19 per tablet in some European countries, and more in other regions of the world.
Ecstasy adulteration is responsive to market pressures


Key neurotransmitters affected by MDMA include serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. MDMA influences the activity of neurotransmitters—chemical messengers responsible for transmitting signals in the brain. Primarily, it depends on the individual’s metabolism, the amount of MDMA taken, frequency of use, and the user’s overall health. These metabolites are chemicals produced as the body processes MDMA, which linger in the system, offering a window into recent drug use. For MDMA, this involves identifying traces of the drug’s metabolite

According to 2021 data, tablets and powders/crystals share the EU MDMA market equally, with some variability among countries in terms of preference for either ecstasy tablets or MDMA powders/crystals (see Figure 6.1. Distribution of usual MDMA forms across countries


A study conducted by 10 drug-checking organisations from the TEDI network found that the increase in MDMA content in tablets in this time period was directly related to an increase in the average weight of ecstasy tablets (Vrolijk et al., 2022). The average content of MDMA in ecstasy tablets appears to be on a slight downward trend from 2019, after close to a decade of increasingly stronger (and larger) tablets becoming available on the market. On occasion, neurotoxic compounds such as PMMA (5) are detected mixed with, or as a replacement for, MDMA in ecstasy tablets. From 2019 onwards a new cycle appears to have begun, whereby the number of ecstasy tablets containing other substances alongside, or instead of, MDMA has increased (as expressed by a drop in percentage in the indexed trends shown above from 96 % in 2019 to 73 % in 2022). Crystal MDMA was marketed as a purer product compared to ecstasy tablets, an assertion that was and remains largely true (see Section The trend of large tablets containing more MDMA may be reversing). One way to observe these cycles is to monitor rates of adulteration, as expressed by the percentage of tested samples of seized ecstasy tablets that contain MDMA and no other buy mdma scheduled substances.
Wastewater-based methods
(1) The European Web Survey on Drugs (EWSD) is a voluntary, anonymous survey run by the EUDA and its partners targeting directly people who use drugs who are 18 years old or older, and are living in one of the participating countries. When using wastewater data to estimate MDMA markets, the use of MDMA is based on the excreted parent drug, rather than on an excreted metabolite (which is the case for some other drugs, such as cocaine and heroin). While a slight decrease in price was observed in 2022 for ecstasy tablets, this may not be statistically significant or sustained in the coming years. In fact, it could be argued that MDMA in the form of ecstasy tablets became cheaper between 2012 and 2019 as tablets containing larger quantities of MDMA became increasingly available on the market (see Section The trend of large tablets containing more MDMA may be reversing).
Increased ener


By combining these data, the estimated annual value of the retail market for MDMA in Europe is at least EUR 594 million, around 90 % of which can be attributed to frequent users. The price data used was the average retail price for MDMA in buy mdma the country concerned, drawn from the EUDA’s annual data collection (see Section Price and purity). For some countries (Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Malta, Netherlands, Norway and Türkiye) no data were available from the EWSD. The annual amounts used, in tablets, could be estimated for each survey participant based on their responses to questions on the number of tablets used on a typical day, multiplied by the number of days they said they used the drug in a year. As such, only last year prevalence and last month prevalence data are required to distinguish these two groups.
Reporting countries
According to survey data, the two largest MDMA consumer markets per capita in the European Union are the Netherlands and Ireland, with 6 % or more people aged 15 to 34 reporting to have consumed MDMA in the last year. Some of the high-strength ecstasy tablets are scored to allow consumers to divide them into smaller portions. These identifications of high-strength ecstasy tablets prompted harm reduction organisations to issue alerts. In December 2023, beige-golden ecstasy pills with an Audi-logo containing over 300 milligrams of MDMA (between 316 and 324 milligrams) were submitted to drug testing in the Netherlands (DIMS, 2023). However, this trend appears to be changing, as ecstasy tablets have tended to contain less MDMA since 201