POLICE SAY CLUBS AWASH IN DESIGNER DRUGS

Overdoses, Arrests Rise; Scrutiny Sought

A young man is slumped on the floor in the stairwell as a woman is being
dragged outside by a friend. In a throne-like chair upstairs, a 21-year-old
sinks lifeless as a ragdoll, her abbreviated miniskirt riding up so high
her white panties are showing. Her friends try to stave off a Boston police
officer, but by 1 a.m., she'll be hauled into New England Medical Center,
the latest to survive an apparent drug overdose at a club.

It's House Night at the Roxy, half past midnight. These are the night's
casualties.

Yet the night has just begun: A pulsing, sweating, strutting mass of 1,400
people is throbbing in sync with techno music, glowing with pink and blue
laser sticks twirled like batons. Dancers routinely run their hands down
the backs of strangers, in sensual yet noncommittal displays of affection.

A patron named Jack explains: "Everybody in here is doing Ecstasy."

Boston may be a city scorned for its puritanical tendencies and famously
early closing times, but it's a wild night in between for those in the
know. Stunned by the city's suddenly open market for so-called designer
drugs like Ecstasy and GHB, Boston police are accusing clubs like The Roxy
of condoning drug use - most egregiously by hiring a private ambulance to
wait in a back alley and to shuttle overdosed patrons out to hospitals,
rather than alerting city emergency services.

"If you hire them, then you know you have a problem," said Sergeant
Detective Margot Hill, spokeswoman for the department. "You're addressing a
symptom instead of a problem. The problem is, illegal drugs or dangerous
drugs being purveyed on your premises."

Roxy owner Lou Delpidio said he hired an ambulance detail last year, not to
handle overdoses, but for minor medical emergencies that occur in the three
nightclubs and hotel sharing space in the tightly squeezed Theater
District. He considered it unnecessary to bring out the city's various
emergency vehicles whenever someone slipped and fell. "Every time you call
an ambulance, the fire department comes with the ambulance and blocks up
the whole street," Delpidio said.

He canceled the service last Saturday, after the police criticized the
hiring of the ambulance detail publicly. Now, clubs like his are facing
greater scrutiny, as the police Bureau of Investigative Services calls
owners in to meet with public health and licensing officials to seek
cooperation on combating designer drug use.

In recent weeks, the issue has been fanned by a spate of overdoses at The
Roxy and the closure of the Paradise, on Commonwealth Avenue, due to
licensing violations. The Roxy faces a Licensing Board hearing on April 4,
due to four nonfatal drug overdoses Feb. 13. Three men were also charged
that weekend with dealing or possessing Ecstasy in the club.

Delpidio, a co-owner of Il Panino restaurants, is also a minority partner
in the group trying to buy the Paradise. He asserts that people take
Ecstasy before they go to clubs, making it impossible for him to police or
prevent.

"I can't go up to every person and say, `You look like you're having too
good a time, you have to leave,"' Delpidio said.

Although Boston police send four officers and a supervisor to a detail at
the Roxy on weekends, they've made just a handful of arrests. Captain
Bernard O'Rourke said designer drugs are so small and easily concealed that
arrests are more difficult than with other drugs.

"The biggest telltale sign is the water consumption," he said.

Which is the drink of choice at The Roxy on a Saturday night. Most patrons
are toting bottles of water, sold for $4. Alcohol dulls the effect of
Ecstasy, which itself causes dehydration and exhaustion, so most users
drink water or fruit juice. Water is also preferred for GHB, since alcohol
can also dramatically increase or complicate its effects.

Delpidio said he would do anything he could to prevent drug use in his
clubs - he already has sting operations in place and just posted police
warning signs in bathrooms. Several times a night at the Roxy, a Euro DJ
offers a police-crafted public service announcement, warning that accepting
drugs dropped into drinks is dangerous, if not deadly.

GHB, he warns, is not cool.

But the atmosphere would indicate otherwise. In a room charged with sexual
energy, men are taking off their shirts and women are wearing strappy
halters and barely-there skirts. For some, the touching of strangers seems
like affection for its own sake. Others are lost in the dancing, meeting
the mounting beat of the techno music.

Ecstasy causes seemingly contradictory effects - high energy,
talkativeness, insomnia, and accelerated heartbeat combined with deep
relaxation and generalized happiness - that users say puts them in a lucid,
peaceful, and uninhibited state. An internal euphoria mixes with an
external emotional warmth to deliver the nickname "the hug drug" and make
someone feel that all is right with the world.

The side effects: A brutal hangover, a wringing restoration of emotions in
the ensuing hours and days, and involuntary tooth grinding, which some
combat by sucking on pacifiers or lollipops.

The new problem, police say, is the combination of alcohol or Ecstasy with
GHB, an odorless, tasteless drug dropped into drinks that produces some
similar effects - and, ill effects. Gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB),
sometimes called Liquid X or G, was first used by bodybuilders for its
ability to stimulate growth hormones, but clubgoers began using it for
induced euphoria. It's also known as "the date-rape drug' because it can
reduce inhibitions, cause unconsciousness, and even induce a coma or death.
This week, three teenagers were convicted of killing a 15-year-old Detroit
girl by spiking her soda with the drug last year.

Another form of the drug, gamma butyrolactone (GBL) - a liquid either clear
or in shades of fluorescent yellow, green, blue, or red - becomes GHB when
metabolized in the body. It's illegal to manufacture GBL for human
consumption but it is legally sold as a household solvent.

"Unfortunately, people misconstrue the word `legal' to mean `safe,"' said
Hill of the Boston police.

With disturbing frequency, the combinations have been leading to overdoses.
Four people were taken to New England Medical Center on Feb. 13, after
ingesting drinks laced with "Liquid G" at the Roxy, according to a police
report. One, a 28-year-old waitress, drank what she thought was water and
was unconscious within a half-hour. On Feb. 20, an 18-year-old woman from
Woburn passed out at The Roxy and was taken to the hospital for an apparent
overdose of Liquid G. On March 5, a 21-year-old woman from Franklin
overdosed on GHB and ecstasy. Her boyfriend, charged with possession, told
police he buys the drugs inside The Roxy.

Until recently, a three-person EasCare Ambulance crew worked a detail at
The Roxy on Saturdays, for about $400 a night (plus a minimum of $300
charged to each patient transported). Two paramedics patrolled upstairs
with radios.

City officials allege the private ambulances have been used in an effort to
skirt the attention of police and licensing officials who would follow up
reports of overdoses.

"We track all of our calls where we see trends, whether it's overdoses or
heat emergencies or cold emergencies," said Richard Serino, Boston EMS
superintendent-in-chief.

But Delpidio said he expects the problem to diminish with increased
attention.

Even since last week, he says, "It has gone down dramatically. We are on
the ball here and we are looking to have them arrested. I won't put up with
it."