PMA continues to plague the MDMA market in Australia

The death of a 20-year-old Canberra man from the illegal designer drug PMA has raised concerns among doctors of a possible shift in drug use towards the "more lethal" substance.

The man, who was recently admitted to Canberra's Calvary Hospital with a suspected overdose of MDMA, died 10 days after ingesting paramethoxyamphetamine, which goes under the street name PMA, Death or Dr Death, and which is often passed off as ecstasy.

PMA has been sold as 'Ecstasy' for a long time. There were a slew of deaths in Florida back in 2000, and there were deaths from presumably the same batch in France shortly thereafter. The substance has been seen in Canada, Spain, and since 2001, Australia. Our theory then and now has been that one or two really large batches were made and that batch has been shopped around again and again as dealers attempt to make their money back on the bunk they bought. Tellingly, the initial PMA scares in the US revolved around the tan/off-white colored pills stamped with the Mitsubishi logo. Last year's PMA-related deaths in Australia were caused by pills referred to as Red Mitsubishis. Red Mistubishi is also the name of the PMA pills that killed several Australians back in 2004.

Unfortunately, a lot of the media surrounding this has said that PMA is added to Ecstasy, or that PMA is a stronger form of Ecstasy, or that users are seeking the drug out. These are not true, as nearly ALL trip reports of the drug have been negative, and all lab testing that has been made available publicly has shown that PMA is the only active substance present.

Short of a gas chromatograph, the best means of differentiating PMA from true MDMA is with a Marquis Reagent testing kit such as those offered by DanceSafe in the US or the Green Party in the UK. Using a Marquis Reagent, MDMA will turn purple/black relatively quickly, PMA will have no reaction.

I experienced this first-hand at Burning Man 2000 when I and another DanceSafe volunteer took testing kits with us. A lad came up to me and asked to test some pills he'd gotten at the festival. They were cream-colored tablets stamped with the Mitsubishi logo with dark flecks, double thickness and kinda large in diameter. They had no reaction and the guy chose not to take them.