Newcastle: Super-strength Ecstasy is an episode of the 2016 BBC Three series Drugs Map of Britain, it explores the new generation of ecstasy users and focuses on a group of students in Newcastle who take the drug. The students were all born in the 1990’s and refer to themselves as The Children of Ecstasy. In case you didn’t get the reference, it refers of course to the fact that their parents were young when the UK saw the Acid House and ecstasy-fueled Second Summer of Love in 1989 (SEE: The Summer of Rave, 1999).
Young people are taking MDMA to help them open up to their friends and make socializing easier, but it doesn’t come without its risks. Ecstasy deaths are on the rise due to the ever-increasing demand for stronger and stronger pills, and much of the demand isn’t being met by pills mass produced in lab conditions by highly organized gangs but by amateurs importing MDMA powder using the dark web and using a pill press in their bedrooms.
