Monday, December 31, 2012

‘It opens your heart’: Canada approves use of ecstasy in study into post-traumatic stress disorder

National Post
Exactly a century after ecstasy was first patented, Health Canada has approved the drug’s import for the first Canadian study using the illegal substance in trauma survivors’ therapy. The decision to allow two Vancouver therapists to import nine grams of MDMA from a laboratory in Switzerland — one of only two such permitted facilities worldwide — will kickstart the first experiment with the euphoria-and-empathy-producing drug in B.C. on Jan. 1, according to a Health Canada email obtained by the National Post, dated Nov. 23. “I don’t know if we’ll have to wait until the MDMA is actually in our hands, but we’ve got a whole list of people who want to come to do it,” Dr. Ingrid Pacey, one of the researchers, told the Post. “There’s a part of me that still doesn’t quite believe it. When the MDMA arrives from Switzerland … when it finally lands on Canadian soil, then I’ll be certain.”