'Ecstasy Oil' Fire Under Fire
Six Australian Federal Police have travelled to a remote location in Cambodia to burn off 1,000 drums of safrole – a substance sometimes known as ‘ecstasy oil’ – the amount of which could have been used to make almost 250 million pills. Not surprisingly it’s said that the disposal will have a marked affect on the manufacture of ecstasy tablets worldwide, however the AFP have come under fire (pun intended…) after concerns emerged on the environmental effect of the burn-off.
Estimates put the value of drugs the safrole could have produced at $7.6 billion, however the AFP’s assistant commissioner Tim Morris admitted the disposal would have resulted in harmful carcinogenic smoke being released into the atmosphere. “There doesn’t seem to be any other way to dispose of this chemical and it was done in a remote area away from the population,” The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Morris as saying. The oil was burnt off in Pursat, 170 kilometres from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh.
The AFP were on hand to offer Cambodian authorities advice on its ‘safe’ disposal. “The majority of this [substance] would have been moved into neighbouring counties for further processing and it’s certainly likely that this safrole would have been used in the production of ecstasy that would have ended up in Australia, for sure,” Morris continued.
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marly
said ages ago