Tesla Ecstasy Pills: How They Became The Most Popular Way To Get High
Tesla pills : Jenny*, a 20-year-old student from Los Angeles, was getting ready for Coachella earlier this summer.
She wore the obligatory adorable hat, tasselled flip flops, and two Orange Tesla ecstasy pills stashed in a hidden pocket.
She chose Teslas because she’d heard they’re powerful and make people happy, and she’d like to buy one someday.
Green WhatsApp pills and purple Tomorrowland pills were also available.
Jenny being able to get Tesla-branded ecstasy may seem strange, but those in the know will not be surprised; after all, ecstasy pill designs have a long history of imitating cultural fads.
The Pink Panther and 007 pills, both of which had the relevant emblem stamped on them, are two of the earliest ecstasy pills on record.
Molly is the club drug of preference for American ravers, hence most ecstasy users today are European.
Molly and ecstasy, on the other hand, are the same thing: ecstasy is pressed 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), while Molly is MDMA powder.
“[Americans] believed pills had grown so contaminated with other drugs in the 2000s that [Molly] was advertised as a purer form.
Molly is rubbish in the United States because anyone can adulterate powder,” said Joseph J.
Palamar, an assistant professor at New York University Langone Medical Center’s Department of Population Health.
Partygoers may now choose from TripAdvisor, Skype, and Netflix ecstasy pills, among other brands, in the realm of illicit substance branding.
This technological invasion is unsurprising in several ways. Silicon Valley is the new mecca, the Hollywood for the hardworking, and today’s tech gods are held up as beacons of achievement.
Instead of more traditional organisations, today’s kids aspire to work at Facebook (free meals! free holidays!) and Google (slides! free bikes! swag!) because of the high wages and employee advantages.
These new tech brands have become associated with cool and, as a result, are now associated with having a good time, which explains the rise in branded pharmaceuticals.
Mitchell Gomez, executive director of DanceSafe, a non-profit that promotes health and safety in the dance community, isn’t surprised that tech brands are popular in the drug industry
He replied via email, “The phenomenon of tablets and blotters being produced with company logos extends back many, many years.”
“It’s [likely] about marketing and recognition in the present day. People remember brand logos, so it’s a good method to capitalise on their fame while also providing a quick way to describe a certain press.”
It’s also possible that the frequent use of tech logos is due to the distributor’s aversion to retooling their pill presses.
Take, for example, Mitsubishi, one of the most popular ecstasy pills of the 1980s and 1990s.
It was all anyone could find for a while, but that doesn’t mean they were all created in the same spot.
According to Johnboy Davidson, a spokeswoman for the ecstasy pill testing database Pill Reports, “Perhaps the reason for the Mitsubishi’s extensive use was that it was a pretty easy form to create.”
“On the underground market, pill press dies are just as difficult to come by, if not more difficult, than the chemical precursors used to create the drugs.”
Let’s take a look at how some of these brands got started. According to statistics from Pill Reports, Tesla tablets first appeared in 2015 and surged in popularity the following year.
Facebook pills have been around since 2014, Snapchat since 2015, and ecstasy pills for Apple Macintosh have been circulating since the late 1990s.
Typically, these tablets, like the brand itself, have remained popular throughout the year.
However, pill poppers should avoid consuming these brands indiscriminately.
Drug safety websites have issued alerts in the last year warning users about ecstasy pills to avoid.
They issued a warning about Tesla tablets that were glow in the dark and contained nearly twice the quantity of active MDMA.
A new user may accidently overdose if they consume the entire pill rather than splitting it.
The concern is the pill’s purity in this case. Then there were the phoney pink MasterCard pills that may have had a role in the death of a 17-year-old girl last year, and the blue Snapchat pills that hospitalised some users in Australia.
I contacted Tesla, which is presently valued at roughly $48 billion, for a comment on the use of their brand, but they rejected.
But it doesn’t mean they’re pleased with the situation.
“All of this corporate IP is being stolen and appropriated on perhaps the most controversial product there is, [but] the corporations rarely do anything about it,” said Davidson, who claims that in the twenty years he’s been running Pill Reports, he’s only had a couple of takedown requests, which he ignored citing fair use and copyright laws.
Bitcoin, WhatsApp, Tesla, Heineken, and Rolex are just a few of the prominent tech brands on his site.
“One especially nefarious organisation wrote us a threatening letter demanding that we delete all logo photos and text references to their brand,” Davidson added.
He claims that removing these photographs might have disastrous consequences, with people missing out on possibly life-saving information.
“I did offer to swap the phrases ‘Baby Formula Scandal Coffee Company,’ which are completely outside of copyright but would still reveal whose brand we were discussing. Surprisingly, we didn’t hear from them again.”
Ecstasy pills aren’t the only drugs that have been branded; heroin baggies with creative designs have been popular for a while, and LSD has a long history of being printed with hallucinogenic and pop culture motifs.
“Branding has always been important,” Palamar explained, revealing that when ecstasy first became popular, people would seek out specific brands because they had positive memories with the drug.
“Over the years, tens of thousands of logos have been used,” he remarked. “
I believe it has a strong link to popular culture. It’s mostly millennials who use ecstasy, and they’re into Snapchat and popular culture.
” Palamar, on the other hand, is concerned about the potency of many of these pills, pointing out that one Netflix pill is not the same as another – EcstasyData lists one pill as having 220 mg and the other as having 270 mg.
For comparison, an average ‘safe’ dose per person is roughly 100mg.
He said, “I’m not sure how easy it is to cut these in half.” However, he suggests that, as much as Tesla and his colleagues may be concerned, their day may be coming to an end soon.
“Kids want to try new things all of the time,” he explained. “It’s [partly] because of this that new medications appear.”
Davidson agrees with Palamar’s assessment of pill acceptance. “The appeal of high-tech firms that have already spent millions on the greatest visual design available as the image they want linked with their product is a natural fit.
You might not be able to purchase a Tesla, but why not take a pill with the Tesla emblem and feel just as good?
” he suggested. He notes that many of the pill branding pictures have been replicated over time, pointing to tablets with prints of witches and nerdy faces with glasses as examples.
These were suddenly being offered as Harry Potter pills after the release of “The Boy Who Lived.”
“As if 95 percent of those books weren’t bought by adults, this led to really ridiculous stories in the media about drug dealers using these pill emblems to promote their wares to children.
However, authentic Harry Potter with lightning bolt emblems did arise before long.”
So far, my study has revealed that branded ecstasy has a long history of appeal, in part because to the aspirational companies and pop culture references.
TOP IMAGE – The… [+] first day of the Tomorrowland Electronic Music Festival was captured on July 22, 2016 at the De Schorre recreation area in Boom.
From July 22 to 24, 2016, the 12th edition of the Tomorrowland Electronic Music Festival will take place at the ‘De Schorre’ recreation area in Boom.
/ BELGA / JONAS ROOSENS / Belgium OUT / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / (Photo credit should read JONAS ROOSENS/AFP/Getty Images instead of JONAS ROOSENS/AFP/Getty Images.) )
However, I’m not sure if this is a chicken egg or an egg-chicken issue.
Is it more likely that people pick specific brands — a Tesla over a Tripadvisor pill, for example — or is it more likely that what they buy is based on supply and demand?
What’s in a Label?, a 2009 study report published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, helped me comprehend this.
Pill Brands in the Eyes of Ecstasy Vendors A group of researchers interviewed eight ecstasy traffickers over the course of six months, all of whom had sold at least five tablets.
They were looking at the effects of various pill brands on the relationship.
“I was never able to recall the names. They always seemed so insignificant…
I mean, I’ve never met somebody who had a specific request or was like, “Oh, never mind.” That’s something I don’t want.” –
Lina, a 20-year-old Caucasian San Francisco ecstasy dealer*
The researchers were looking into the DEA’s accusations that ecstasy is packaged with “appealing logos in hopes of developing brand loyalty, instilling trust in the product, and eventually marketing the use of the drug as fun and harmless.”
The researchers wrote that “understanding Ecstasy branding has the power to communicate messages not only about this particular drug market and its subculture, but also about our consumer-conscious society as a whole.”
“Are Ecstasy merchants predicting that specific brand names will tap into this material culture’s ultimate goals, or are they merely products of the society, using the identifiable names with which they are surrounded?”
