I just realized that the study that the University of Auckland is going to try and attempt has a very high chance of being unsuccessful, especially if they are going to be running it strictly within NZ and basing it purely on anecdotal experiences.
The main reason I say this is because NZ has next to no real MDMA available, and that has been the situation for many, many years. The remote location and small market has left the country almost forgotten when it comes to real MDMA.
Instead of MDMA, New Zealand is flooded with commercial "legal ecstasy" pills that contain whatever substances sneaky chemists are able to get passed through their drug laws. I don't know the exact situation
right now, but NZ was flooded with pills that contained chemicals like BZP (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzylpiperazine), mcPP (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-Chlorophenylpiperazine) and numerous other novel chemicals.
So, I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that getting accurate results for this sort of study is going to be quite difficult given the circumstance, which is quite unfortunate.
I hope some other researchers catch onto the same idea though and try the study somewhere where better control is possible.