Purple MDMA (Crystal)

So… What’s Purple MDMA?

The short answer is: Nobody knows for sure. Or, as Clark told us, “purple molly” is “a useless phrase… You either have MDMA, or you don’t.” In other words, the purple tint of crystals and powders doesn’t necessarily indicate a different substance, or say much about its quality. Anecdotal reports and scientific testing seem to agree that most of what’s being sold as “purple molly” does contain MDMA, specialists told DoubleBlind during interviews. Many samples turned into labs and testing centers test pure, while some contain adulterants—which can also be said of MDMA that is white, brown, or any other color. Purple MDMA (Crystal)

Chemists and harm reduction specialists have two main theories for why some MDMA is purple. The first is that it has to do with artifacts left over from the manufacturing process. When properly synthesized and “washed” by a lab, MDMA crystals come out white. If they are brown or a different color, that usually indicates leftover impurities, which could include heavy metals like mercury or aluminum, according to DanceSafe, though that’s not necessarily dangerous. Contrary to this theory, however, Clark told us that testing has not revealed purple MDMA samples to have consistent impurities in common.

The next best guess is that the MDMA has been dyed purple, whether intentionally (as a sort of branding strategy), or unintentionally (because the MDMA was dissolved in wine or another purple substance for the purpose of covert transportation). Clark said intentional dyeing was an “obvious” hypothesis, given that “it has become a thing in the last year for traffickers to explicitly dye their products using food coloring.” The underground market is now peppered with drugs sold as “green hulk” or “purple amethyst,” but these are “just a convenient way of branding your product,” says Clark—the same way that tusi, the mysterious drug cocktail sweeping Latin America, is dyed pink. Purple MDMA (Crystal)