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Shulgin continued his legal research of new compounds after leaving Dow, specializing in the phenethylamines family of drugs. MDMA is but one of 179 psychoactive drugs which he described in detail, but it is the one, which he felt, came closest to fulfilling his ambition of finding the perfect therapeutic drug. Since MDMA had already been patented in 1913, it held no profit potential for a drug company, as a drug cannot be patented twice and before marketing a new drug, a company has to show that the potential side effects are justified by the drug's benefits as a medicine, and this involves long and expensive trials. The only way of recouping that expense is by obtaining exclusive rights to sell the drug through holding its patent. Only a few experimental therapists researched and tested the drug (between 1977 to 1985) for use during psychotherapy sessions (Cannon 4). .
In 1985, MDMA/Ecstasy received massive media attention when a group of people sued the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to try to prevent them from outlawing the drug by placing it on Schedule 1(Nelson 4). The US Congress had passed a new law allowing the DEA to put an emergency ban on any drug that it thought might be a danger to the public. On July 1st 1985, this right was used for the first time to ban MDMA. A hearing was held to decide what permanent measures should be taken against the drug. One side argued that MDMA caused brain damage in rats, the other side claimed this might not be true for humans and that there was proof of the beneficial use of MDMA as a drug treatment in psychotherapy. The residing judge after weighing the evidence, recommended that MDMA be placed on Schedule 3, which would have allowed it to be manufactured, used on prescription and subject to further research. But the DEA decided to place MDMA permanently on Schedule 1. Trial research into the effects of MDMA on human volunteers resumed in 1993 with the approval of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).