With any drug, there's risks. If you take a drug day after day after day, and you go out dancing, and you don't drink water, and you dance all night, people have died from this. Primarily, they've died from mixing drugs, because again, on the street, if you don't know what you're taking, you're not taking a pure MDMA, you're not taking the drug that you think you're taking, and you're taking things mixed in with it, then that can be very, very dangerous. So it's a toxic stew of chemicals out there, and part of that is the problem with prohibition, where you can't go and get your drugs tested before you use them. It's really unfortunate.
It's unfortunate that drugs have been made illegal, because it makes using them a lot more dangerous, and people don't know what they're taking. They think they're buying something on the the street, and it's not that at all. So MAPS, as an organization, and the people that work there really believe in a post-prohibition world. In the same way that alcohol caused gangs to develop, gangsters, they're called, I guess, not gangs, that has happened now in this world. When you make something illegal, all you do is drive it underground and make it more dangerous.
And drug cartels now exist in the world that are killing thousands of people. And we need to end the drug war. And one of the ways we can do it, there's a lot of people working on that right now, and that's great, if you're interested in this topic more, I would highly suggest going to the Drug Policy Alliance website. They have some of the most compelling evidence about the harms of the drug war. But we are doing it. MAPS does it by research.
And we take these drugs, and we're working with MDMA now, and we're showing in reality what the drugs do, what they're good for, what the contraindications are. That's also very important with anything you're putting into your body. Whether it's food or alcohol or a drug, you wanna know when you shouldn't take it. And psychedelics have contraindications. There's a general sense, for example, that if you have a personality disorder, if you're not real strong in your personality, that this is probably not the drugs you wanna take. For example, if you have a heart problem, you probably don't wanna take MDMA.
It's unfortunate that drugs have been made illegal, because it makes using them a lot more dangerous, and people don't know what they're taking. They think they're buying something on the the street, and it's not that at all. So MAPS, as an organization, and the people that work there really believe in a post-prohibition world. In the same way that alcohol caused gangs to develop, gangsters, they're called, I guess, not gangs, that has happened now in this world. When you make something illegal, all you do is drive it underground and make it more dangerous.
And drug cartels now exist in the world that are killing thousands of people. And we need to end the drug war. And one of the ways we can do it, there's a lot of people working on that right now, and that's great, if you're interested in this topic more, I would highly suggest going to the Drug Policy Alliance website. They have some of the most compelling evidence about the harms of the drug war. But we are doing it. MAPS does it by research.
And we take these drugs, and we're working with MDMA now, and we're showing in reality what the drugs do, what they're good for, what the contraindications are. That's also very important with anything you're putting into your body. Whether it's food or alcohol or a drug, you wanna know when you shouldn't take it. And psychedelics have contraindications. There's a general sense, for example, that if you have a personality disorder, if you're not real strong in your personality, that this is probably not the drugs you wanna take. For example, if you have a heart problem, you probably don't wanna take MDMA.
