Ecstasy is the third most popular illegal drug in Britain -- 5% of young people aged 16 to 24 claim to have used it in the last year.

Professor David Nutt, incoming chairman of the ACMD, gave evidence to MPs earlier this year asserting that alcohol and tobacco were more dangerous than drugs such as ecstasy.

"The whole harm reduction message disappears because people say, 'They are lying'," he said.

"Let's treat people as adults, tell them the truth and hopefully work with them to minimise its use."

MPs also heard from Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, who said that ecstasy was 'at the bottom of the scale of harm' and 'on the basis of present evidence should not be a class A drug.'

The ACMD is now launching a review to determine whether ecstasy should be downgraded from Class A to Class B.

Transform, a leading campaign group calling for drugs to be legalised, has made a submission to the review stating that the classification system is 'harmful and counterproductive.'

Support for downgrading has also come from commentators in the media.

"Ecstasy is not an addictive drug and it is already eight years since a Police Foundation inquiry found it to be several thousand times less dangerous than heroin and to play a part in fewer than 10 deaths per year," wrote Sophie Morris in The Independent.

"Ever since the tragic death of Leah Betts in 1995, though, it has been difficult to shake ecstasy's reputation as a killer."

"Does anyone remember the one about the clubber who was so blissed out on ecstasy that he started a fight on a bus and stabbed an innocent bystander?"

"Of course you haven't heard any such tales, because ecstasy does not lead to the sort of violent and aggressive behaviour that alcohol does, nor does it develop into a dependency which users turn to crime to fund."

But the UK government has so far ignored calls for ecstasy to be downgraded.

"Ecstasy can and does kill unpredictably -- there is no such thing as a 'safe dose'," said a spokesperson for the Home Office.

"The government firmly believes that ecstasy should remain a Class A drug."