The European Commission called this week for an EU-wide ban on a new drug

Date: 24/06/1999

which has been found to be more dangerous than ecstasy. The drug, 4-MTA, has been linked to 15 cases of overdoses, of which five were fatal. The Commission said that so far only Sweden and Germany had made distribution of the drug illegal. The proposal is the first from the Commission since EU countries agreed in 1997 jointly to monitor and control new synthetic drugs.