Anticipating that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would move to criminalize MDMA in light of the drug's increasing popularity in recreational use, Rick Doblin, Alise Agar and Debby Harlow organized a nonprofit group called Earth Metabolic Design Laboratories (EMDL) to advocate for the potential therapeutic use of MDMA. By 1984 the DEA had announced its intention to designate MDMA as a Schedule I substance, a categorization that would greatly restrict and regulate the drug's availability, as well as indicate that it held no accepted medical use and a high abuse potential.