The latest figures on Ecstasy usage show us how the 'War on Drugs' became the stupidest policy of our times

Suddenly, silently, and at times violently, ecstasy is back. The 2016 European Drug Report, released yesterday, headlined on a very significant surge in usage of psychoactive 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, better known as MDMA, itself better known as ecstasy. The European monitoring centre for drugs, based in Lisbon, estimated that 2.1 million people aged between 15 and 34 used ecstasy in the past year, 300,000 higher than the estimate for 2015.

The findings will alarm for two further reasons: first, because ecstasy usage had previously been falling since its mid-2000s peak; and second, because the purity of the ecstasy now being taken in dance clubs, bars and living rooms across the continent has a much higher level of purity than in earlier years.

Nine out of 12 countries report higher estimates of ecstasy consumption in the past year, with Britain achieving, as it were, the second highest level of use. An estimated 3.5 per cent of young adults say they've taken it in the past year alone (second only to the Netherlands, where 5.5 per cent of adults have taken it). This, of course, is based only on those who have confessed. Many more, doubtless including some who readers of The Independent know well, will have tried it but refuse to admit it.

If ever evidence were needed that the alleged and misnamed "war on drugs" was a catastrophic failure, this would be it. Except we don't need further evidence, because we have a century of it to go on and yet still design policy as if none of that evidence were available to us. Since the passing of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act in the US in 1914, hundreds of billions of dollars - trillions, by some estimates - have been spent fighting an enemy that cannot be defeated. In so doing, we have created infinitely more harm, horror, suffering and penury than if the war had not been fought in the first place.

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