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Notes from the May, 2000 Conference of the
California Association of Toxicologists

Page 4

9:40 am -- "DXM Sold As Ecstasy - results of 1.5 years of lab testing"
Emanuel Sferios - National Director of DanceSafe


Emanuel Sferios spoke briefly (5 minutes?) about DanceSafe's Ecstasy pill testing program which he has been doing for over a year now. He had a handout which showed a summary of all the pills tested and their contents, showing that of the 109 pills tested, 20% contained DXM.

He talked a little about how DXM in ecstasy tablets could be a contributing factor in the 'ecstasy' related emergency room visits from parties. DanceSafe's work to test ecstasy, following up on work done by Nicholas Saunders, MAPS, and others, is clearly an extremely useful project. It is both an excellent record of the current state of available black market substances and a possible way to reduce the amount of problems associated with misrepresented or adulterated pills.

A few of the participants asked questions about the testing. The reception of the idea of harm reduction and pill testing seemed quite positive and supportive. Unfortunately because Emanuel is a friend and I've heard him talk about this before, I didn't take notes :( It was really excellent to have a member of the harm reduction community giving a presentation about efforts to reduce problems while still cooperating with users.


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