6x2 - Ecstasy Wars

April 14, 2015

Stacey Dooley returns with another hard-hitting series lifting the lid on the global war on drugs. Heading to remote and hostile regions, she investigates who's really winning this cat-and-mouse battle between the drug cartels and the police. Along the way she reveals the impact that the west's insatiable desire for more potent drugs is having on the people caught in the crossfire. Stacey follows the trail of the world's best-selling party drug, Ecstasy (aka MDMA), from the forests of Asia to inner-city drug dens in America. Her journey starts in Cambodia, the source of Ecstasy's active ingredient, safrole oil. Here she joins jungle rangers as they patrol the forests to try to stop criminal gangs of loggers chopping down the trees that produce this rare but valuable oil, the raw ingredient of MDMA. From Cambodia, Stacey follows the Ecstasy trail to Vancouver in Canada which is fast becoming one of the biggest centres of production of synthetic drugs on the planet. She joins the police who face a constant battle trying to locate and shut down the clandestine labs turning the oil into Ecstasy pills. Disturbingly, Stacey discovers that as the police get better at intercepting the shipments of oil, the cooks are turning to other chemicals to make Ecstasy, sometimes with devastating effects. Stacey meets the family of one Canadian girl who took a pill she thought was Ecstasy, but which contained a far more powerful chemical - with lethal consequences. Across the world there's an increasing number of Ecstasy-related deaths, linked to unknown and dangerous chemicals being used in its production. In Atlanta in the US, Stacey tracks down drug dealers selling Ecstasy from their 'trap house'. Here it's outstripping meth and crack as the most popular drug they sell, leading Stacey to conclude that what started as a party drug is now well on its way to becoming a street drug, sold by dangerous, warring gangs across the US.