The XTC-shop: Discussing the normalization and regulation of XTC in Amsterdam

Description

Initiatives to legalize MDMA are on the political agenda. Following earlier comparable experiments with an ‘XTC-shop’ in the cities of Utrecht (Quadros Rigoni et al., 2023) and Ghent (Decorte et al., forthcoming), in October and November 2024, we explored social responses to three potential scenarios of regulated sales of XTC/MDMA through an ‘XTC-shop’ in Westerpark in Amsterdam. The ‘shop’ was set up by the Poppi Drugs Museum in collaboration with creative artists and researchers from Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. The ‘shop’ contained a pharmacy, a smart shop, and a club/rave, in which over 2,000 visitors imagined the purchase of MDMA pills in an interactive way (there were no real sales of MDMA). In addition to survey data collected (N=371), the UU team organized exit conversations (Swain et al., 2022) with 135 visitors. These informal conversations aimed to explore the reasons and conditions under which visitors would find regulated sales of XTC acceptable. This paper will present preliminary findings of this new edition of the XTC-shop in Amsterdam and discuss how such an immersive experience, combining an art installation and more traditional research methods, can be effective in creating awareness and fostering informed discussions — contributing to a local political dialogue on the normalization and regulation of XTC beyond polarized and superficial drug debates.

Period	17 Apr 2025
Event title	International conference on Culture, Crime, and Global Challenges 7th Conference on Cultural Criminology: 7th Conference on Cultural Criminology
Event type	Conference
Location	Utrecht, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International