[soylentcola]

I've always felt the ecstasy/molly/mdma thing (at least in seller/user circles) was more about branding than anything else.

In the 90's you'd buy "ecstasy" which theoretically contained MDMA as the sole active ingredient but likely did not. Various cheaper actives and inactives were added to make more money for sellers as you'd expect in an underground market so the term became less trusted.

Enter "molly" which implies a more pure product containing only MDMA but still with the potential to be bogus or cut with something else. As with "ecstasy" the only way to tell was to test it.

Regardless of the semantics of illicit drug slang, I just hate when purportedly "serious" pieces use slang terms for the drugs in question. Same as when they use "pot" or "marijuana" in place of cannabis. I can't imagine a serious article that discusses medical studies of alcoholic beverages referring to their "booze" and "hooch" studies.

[drvdevd]

From Wikipedia on MDMA:history (and a true story AFAIK -- go see their citations):

> Perceiving a business opportunity, Michael Clegg, the Southwest distributor for the Boston Group, started his own "Texas Group" backed financially by Texas friends. In 1981, Clegg had coined "Ecstasy" as a slang term for MDMA to increase its marketability.

Mind you, this was before it became illegal.

Much like Marijuana, that stupid (but successful) name was probably one of the main reasons it did become so popular, and then illegal, in the first place.