ECSTASY USE RISING, SENATORS TOLD

WASHINGTON -- Philip McCarthy just wanted to have as much fun as the other
kids when he took Ecstasy for the first time at a house party in a New York
City suburb. Soon the 17-year-old was hooked and stealing televisions and
VCRs to support a $300-a-week drug habit.

When he was on Ecstasy, "I felt like the world was glowing with love and my
body felt unreal," McCarthy, of Central Islip, N.Y., told the Senate
Government Affairs Committee, led by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., Monday
at a hearing on Ecstasy's quick growth.

"It was a high I definitely wanted again," said McCarthy, who is currently
in drug treatment.

Ecstasy, known scientifically as methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, is
a synthetic, psychoactive pill that typically induces feelings of euphoria
and dramatically raises blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. It
gained popularity in the 1990s at all-night dance parties known as raves.

"While users of club drugs often take them simply for energy to keep on
dancing or partying, research shows these drugs can have long-lasting
negative effects on the brain that can alter memory and other behaviors,"
said Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

He said more public education about the drug's dangers, including heart,
kidney and brain damage, is essential to combatting its use.

McCarthy and fellow Phoenix House drug treatment program participant Dayna
Moore, 16, said they knew nothing of the anger and depression that would
hit after Ecstasy's high wore off. That quickly led them into cycles of
addiction as they took more and more Ecstasy, which sells for $20 to $40
per pill.

"It was a depression that I couldn't stand," said Moore, of Ridge, N.Y.

Seizures of Ecstasy by the Customs Service grew from about 400,000 tablets
in 1997, to 3.5 million tablets in 1999, to more than 9 million tablets in
2000. The drug is manufactured mostly in Belgium and The Netherlands.

"No matter how successful our enforcement efforts, our best defense is less
demand," said John Varrone, assistant commissioner in Customs' office of
investigations.

The White House's drug policy office began a $5 million radio and Internet
campaign in August aimed at educating youths and adults about Ecstasy's
dangers, said Donald R. Vereen, the office's deputy director.

MDMA "is a public health problem that is behaving like an epidemic," Vereen
said, citing hospital data showing the number of Ecstasy references in
emergency room episodes grew from 250 in 1994 to 4,511 in 2000.

Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, have sponsored
legislation that would require more public education about Ecstasy and
provide funding to state and local law enforcement and to the National
Institutes of Health for research on the drug's health effects. In the
House, a similar bill by Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., has bipartisan support.

Editor's note: The bills are S. 1208 and H.R. 2582.