;Resize=(1200,627)&impolicy=perceptual&quality=mediumHigh&hash=0a987abd85a244ec94210abfe29d5fcd30f14d1c7fcbdb61b89012b653ad38d4 "13-year-old died – that’s why the ecstasy variant “Blue Punisher” is so dangerous")
A 13-year-old girl died in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania after allegedly taking the Blue Punisher ecstasy pill. A 14-year-old is being treated in an intensive care unit in Neubrandenburg. The same blood and urine values indicate that she too had previously consumed the drug.
The police assume that more pills are in circulation and warn. But what exactly is behind “Blue Punisher”? The answers to the most important questions.
What does ecstasy do to the body?
The collective term ecstasy refers to synthetic drugs in tablet, powder or crystal form that are manufactured in the laboratory without natural raw materials. Behind it is an amphetamine derivative based on the main active ingredient MDMA.
Ecstasy leads to flights of fancy, sociability and loss of sense of time. The body’s warning system is switched off. When used as a party drug, prolonged dancing can lead to extreme water loss, organ damage or circulatory collapse. Fatal renal failure has been observed, as has fatal cerebral hemorrhage. The drug can also cause psychosis and delusions.
What exactly is the Blue Punisher drug?
“Blue Punisher” (German: “blue punisher”) is a particularly strong variant of Ecstasy. The pill’s appearance resembles a diamond with a skull engraved on it, inspired by the logo of the Marvel character, The Punisher. Also available only as “The Punisher” and other colors, the blue pill can often be broken in half via a score line.
Why is “Blue Punisher” so dangerous?
According to the drug information center (DIZ) in Zurich, whole pills can sometimes contain several hundred milligrams of the active ingredient MDMA and other unknown substances. In Great Britain, for example, a “Blue Punisher” was discovered in 2021, which contains 477 milligrams of MDMA, several times the usual dose of ecstasy pills. In 2021, the average active ingredient content of an ecstasy tablet was between 161 and 173 milligrams. A total of 10,000 were seized in Europe.
The Zurich DIZ warns that more than 1.5 milligrams of MDMA per kilogram of body weight in men and 1.3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight in women is too much for such extremely high doses as in “The Punisher”. That means: even taking half of such a pill can lead to an overdose.
Where exactly does ecstasy come from?
Ecstasy was patented in 1912 by the Darmstadt pharmaceutical company Merck. Initially, it was used medically as an appetite suppressant and in psychotherapy to increase sociability. The substance name MDMA has been used synonymously for ecstasy since the 1980s. The proliferation of the drug began in the 1990s with the techno movement.