Despite being the world’s most popular entactogen, MDMA remains a Schedule I drug under the DEA’s classification due to its high potential for abuse and lack of recognized medical use. MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy or Molly, is a psychoactive synthetic drug that affects users’ emotions. We recognise the continued connection of First Nations people to the land, the waterways and to community and kin, and pay respects to Elders past and present.
Harms and ris

From 2004 to 2009, buy mdma the proportion of seized European ecstasy tablets that contained MDMA as the only scheduled substance dropped substantially. When availability of MDMA is high, ecstasy tablets tend to contain MDMA as the main or only psychoactive ingredient, with the opposite occurring when there are shortages. Despite this, on average, only a minority of EWSD respondents reported obtaining the drug online, although this varied widely across countries.


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

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). For countries reporting data in 2022, a considerable retail price range was observed, with prices per ecstasy tablet ranging from EUR 4 to EUR 19 (mean) and prices of MDMA powder from EUR 6 to EUR 50 per gram. Occasionally, tablets containing 250 milligrams or more of MDMA are encountered on EU drug markets. This trend may be a combination of the scheduling of PMK glycidate, and a reduction in demand for MDMA during the COVID-19 pandemic, and is in line with the changes observed in the adulteration of ecstasy tablets (see Section Ecstasy adulteration is responsive to market pressures). This means that the ratio of MDMA to fillers (excipients) in the mixtures used to make ecstasy tablets did not increase over this time period.


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
Although often used interchangeably, ecstasy and MDMA are not necessarily synonyms. Additionally, particularly with instant messaging applications, transactions may be organised online, but completed using in-person pick-up or ‘dead-drop’ delivery. This appears to be supported by existing studies that indicate that MDMA is bought online mostly by retail distributors for the purpose of re-sale rather than purchased directly by retail clients (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2016; Gremeaux, 2022). Data collected from individuals submitting MDMA samples to drug-checking services between 2019 and 2022 appear to support these findings from the EWSD.
Increased ener


MDMA is reported in small numbers of drug-induced deaths, and in most countries less than 1 in 20 cases involve the drug. While affected by limitations and uncertainties, this type of data analysis shows great promise as a complementary information source to monitor the size and changes in drug markets (Quireyns et al., 2023). It was possible to construct estimates of city-level MDMA market sizes by combining wastewater data with country-level data for average retail purity and price. By combining these data, the estimated annual value of the buy mdma retail market for MDMA in Europe is at least EUR 594 million, around 90 % of which can be attributed to frequent user