Last weekend, 20-year-old Olivia Rotondo and 23-year-old Jeffrey Russ died of alleged Molly overdoses sustained at Electric Zoo Festival on Randall’s Island, NY.

This comes on the heels of two overdoses at the Sound Tribe Sector 9/Umphrey’s McGee show in Boston last Saturday, which was overshadowed by 19-year-old Brittany Flannigan’s fatal overdose at a Zedd show, also in Boston, earlier in the week.

These are real people, and their deaths are completely heartbreaking, tragic and pointless. But that’s not what this article is about.

This article is about news segments like this:

“…New designer drug…” “…Rapid rise…” “…Hot drug of the moment…”

Let’s make this clear: there is nothing new about this drug. Molly, or MDMA, has been around since 1913. Used by psychiatrists as a therapeutic tool, and currently undergoing clinical trials as a treatment for PTSD, the drug was legal up until 1985. This video (along with the myriad of other news segments on the subject) is laughable. These are the Reefer Madness-esque clips that your children will laugh at when they are teenagers, the complete ignorance about modern counterculture that makes young people shake their heads and listen to adults even less than they already were.

Here’s an idea: If news reporters, health officials, and anybody else with some type of platform, want to be helpful they can start by presenting actual facts about the drug and drug use in general. Instead of fear mongering an entire genre of music and generation of kids, let’s have real talk. Yes, a lot of people take Molly at electronic music shows. And yes, when used irresponsibly (aka taking a shit load of it without 1. having it tested at the bunk police which most festivals provide or 2. having any previous knowledge about the drug and its effects) it can be dangerous. But nobody is doing anybody any favors by making a blanket statement of “THIS IS EVIL AND EVERYONE MUST STOP.” This type of cliche generalization is just as irresponsible as the kids who are abusing the drug.

So far, the autopsies on Rotondo and Russ have come back inconclusive. But do you want to know what I think? (This is my website so I’m going to tell you regardless.) I think there is a bad batch of Molly going around which has been causing a large amount of deaths and overdoses. Remember the Paradiso Festival overdoses at the beginning of the summer?

Unless you have a pre-existing condition, I don’t think taking six “hits” (what is a “hit” of Molly, anyway? You mean a 1/10th? A capsule?) would kill you. I think it would make you puke and then you’d probably feel pretty damn good. Because when taken responsibly, Molly – like everything else in this world used in moderation – is fun.

Speaking of fun things ruined by the mass population and media, can somebody please tell Miley Cyrus that just because you yell “twerk it!” and spread your entire butt crack open doesn’t mean you are twerking. This is twerking:

NOT this:

Twerking was fun and exciting for me when I first saw the Major Lazer video for “Pon de Floor” and was like, “Holy shit! What are those girls doing?” and learned about it through contemporary trap and dancehall music. Now, after Miley’s VMA performance helped catapult the word into the Oxford Dictionary Online, every 13-year-old girl is likely running around twerking on each other in the cafeteria while waiting in line to get their tater tots and French bread pizza. Just days after Miley’s infamous MTV moment aired, a collaboration between her and Justin Bieber titled – you guessed it – “Twerk” leaked online. I don’t know what’s more outrageous: the song itself, or the fact that it only takes like, three days for Justin Bieber to produce a pop hit.

And now, for your listening pleasure, here is the audio for the Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus brainchild. Don’t forget to eat a ton of Molly before you watch this — it will help with the twerking.