BULK OF ILLICIT CLUB DRUG CONCOCTED IN RURAL NETHERLANDS LABS

ESBEEK, Netherlands -- On the outskirts of this hamlet, a narrow dirt track
cuts through pine forests and grain fields, meandering toward the Belgian
border.

But as farmers drive their tractors across the pastoral landscape, they
sometimes find their paths blocked by piles of plastic drums dumped in the
road, or they come across charred, abandoned panel vans. At times, they
might even sniff what smells like licorice wafting in the wind.

This is the unlikely heart of Ecstasy country.

Chances are good that an Ecstasy tablet taken at a party in North Jersey or
at a New Jersey shore nightclub came from a clandestine lab within miles of
this farming village, where chemists working in rustic barns transform
drums of chemicals into one of America's fastest-growing illicit drugs.

"Two years ago, I didn't ever hear of this stuff," said Bergen County
Assistant Prosecutor Kenneth Ralph, who heads the county's narcotics task
force. "Now it's everywhere."

Dubbed the "love drug" or "hug drug," Ecstasy removes inhibitions and makes
it easier for users to connect with others. Taking the drug -- or "rolling"
- -- heightens sensations: Lights become brighter, the slightest touch feels
tremendous, and music rhythms are intensified. It also supplies seemingly
endless energy.

This summer, federal drug officials say, more than 750,000 Ecstasy tablets
are being consumed each week in the region from the New York-North Jersey
metropolitan area to the shore. And the vast majority of those tablets come
from southeastern Holland.

An affluent nation renowned for its tulip fields and picturesque canals,
Holland has been accused by the U.S. government of being the "principal
source country" of Ecstasy worldwide.

"The Netherlands is to Ecstasy as Colombia is to cocaine," John C. Varrone,
who heads the investigative arm of the U.S. Customs Service, recently told
a congressional panel.

About 80 percent of the Ecstasy that makes its way into the United States
is produced in the Netherlands, U.S. law enforcement officials say.

As a result, State Department officials are discussing placing the
Netherlands on the government's "decertification" list, which identifies
nations it considers "major" drug-producing or transit countries that have
not met the objectives of a United Nations anti-narcotics treaty, or have
not taken sufficient action to stop the problem, a department official said.

With only Afghanistan and Burma currently listed, even the threat of being
placed on the pariah rolls brings tremendous embarrassment to a European
nation such as the Netherlands. It could even exacerbate the colossal law
enforcement and public relations nightmares the Dutch government already faces.

In 1998, Dutch officials formed a national police unit devoted to tracking
the Ecstasy trade. They also passed stronger drug-trafficking laws. Ecstasy
seizures in the Netherlands jumped dramatically as a result: In one year,
they more than tripled, climbing from 1.16 million tablets seized in 1998
to 3.66 million in 1999.

"We have increased significantly the resources dedicated to fight Ecstasy,"
said Han Peters, a Dutch Embassy official in Washington.

But U.S. authorities say more Ecstasy is flooding into the United States
than ever before.

Customs inspectors seized 660,000 Ecstasy tablets smuggled into Newark
International Airport in the fiscal year that ended in September 2000. By
this Sept. 30, they expect to have broken the 1 million mark.

A Crossroads For Smugglers

Why the Netherlands became the world's leading Ecstasy producer is a
mixture of history and circumstance -- including the country's
long-existing drug underworld, its culture and social policies, domestic
political considerations, and restrictions in Dutch criminal law.

"In the United States, everything is black and white," said a Dutch Foreign
Ministry official, who requested anonymity. "In the Netherlands, everything
is gray. We always compromise in the Netherlands. The Dutch are always
pragmatic."

Smuggling has long thrived in Holland's North Brabant region. For more than
100 years, black marketeers smuggled goods from adjacent Belgium and
circumvented Holland's high taxes.

Historically, North Brabant was long considered unimportant and remote,
with few links to the Dutch interior. Local folklore is rife with tales of
highwaymen who operated with impunity in the dark forests.

The soil is fertile, making agriculture the region's economic mainstay. It
remains one of the least populated areas, honeycombed with thickly wooded
back-road connections that cross the virtually unpatrolled Belgian border.

In the 19th century, a bootleg liquor industry flourished deep in the
forests. Toward the end of World War II, black market traders smuggled food
and consumer goods from liberated areas of Belgium to the Dutch north,
still occupied by the Nazis.

Smuggling continued until five years ago, when formation of a unified
European Union eliminated most border controls and tariffs among member
nations. Today, the two-lane roads running across the Belgian border have
no checkpoints. Traffic passes unfettered in both directions.

Chemistry also has deep roots in the region. In the Industrial Revolution,
Tilburg, a textile center of 200,000 eight miles north of Esbeek, became
known for its fabric dyes.

The Dutch textile industry collapsed in the early 1960s, battered by
competition from southern Europe and the developing world. Soon after,
clandestine drug laboratories sprouted, specializing in the production of
LSD and methamphetamine.

Now the North Brabant labs make Ecstasy. The distinctive odor of root beer
or licorice the process gives off, which would be obvious in more densely
populated areas, poses little problem among the woods and isolated farms.

When a batch is finished, barrels are discarded in the countryside, and
stolen vans used to transport them are burned to destroy evidence. Then
couriers laden with tiny tablets board airliners bound for the United States.

Most of the labs are believed to be run by Dutch organized-crime groups,
but the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says much of the trafficking
is controlled by Israeli crime syndicates. Also reportedly involved are
Russian, Yugoslav, Dominican, and Dutch drug groups.

In 1998 and 1999, the Dutch police Synthetic Drug Unit found 71 drug-making
labs -- in barns, shacks, houses, and even the backs of vans -- many of
them near Esbeek, a town of no more than 300 people. The place doesn't even
appear on most maps.

Yet most of the "discoveries" came only when something went wrong: Some of
the labs were already abandoned when they were found, and a number
exploded, sometimes killing people inside. In 1999 alone, authorities say,
16 labs blew up.

Marco Recalls The Boom Days

When Ecstasy emerged at "rave" house parties in the Netherlands 10 years
ago, many of the early traffickers were what DEA agents call "freelancers."
One of them was a 20-year-old university undergraduate named Marco.

Sitting in a restaurant in the central Dutch city of Utrecht, an hour north
of Esbeek, Marco recounted Ecstasy's boom days in an interview with The
Record. He asked that his last name be withheld.

At the time, Marco said, he organized large, all-night raves in warehouses.
Ecstasy use was integral.

"Everybody was using it at this party, and everybody liked each other --
everybody was walking around with a smile," Marco said of his first Ecstasy
experience. "So the party was really very loving."

French and British guests at Marco's raves in the Netherlands wanted their
own supplies, so Marco bought tablets from a contact in Amsterdam and paid
acquaintances to serve as couriers.

To prepare the shipments, he said, he cut drinking straws into sections
about an inch long and stacked eight to 10 Ecstasy pills in each. He
sheathed the straw sections with plastic wrap, melted the plastic around
the ends, and coated the containers with beeswax. He dubbed the creations
"caramels." Couriers then dipped the straw sections in yogurt and swallowed
them.

On average, they ingested 120 tubes -- about 1,000 to 1,200 Ecstasy pills,
Marco said. They then traveled by car or train across Europe, or by air to
more distant destinations. Marco said he sent one courier to the Caribbean
island of Guadeloupe with 5,000 pills, and another to Australia with 2,500
tablets.

"The biggest one we did was 10,000 pills to France," he said. "A friend of
mine did 10,000 in a teddy bear. I never did any to the U.S.A., because I
didn't have any contacts there."

Marco said he earned about $2,000 a month from his part-time smuggling
business, which helped finance a lifestyle far more lavish than that of the
average student. Despite opportunities to boost those profits, he abided by
an unbreakable rule: "I would never cross the border."

That was based on the perception that authorities outside the Netherlands
pursue drug dealers far more aggressively than do the Dutch authorities.
This perception also helps explain why so many Ecstasy laboratories are set
up in Holland.

Indeed, Marco's experience symbolizes what some U.S. and European law
enforcement officials say is wrong with Dutch drug policy.

A Public Health Approach To Drugs

The Netherlands has a long, liberal tradition of personal freedom. Its
social mores on drug use and legalized prostitution, for example, are
extremely permissive by American standards. Overall, illegal drug use is
considered a public health problem, not a crime.

"Soft" drugs such as marijuana are technically illegal, but people who
possess amounts under five grams are not prosecuted. In 105 of Holland's
538 municipalities, specially licensed cafes sell marijuana along with
coffee and cake, while officials look the other way.

Ecstasy is considered an illegal "hard" drug in the Netherlands. But, as
with marijuana, those caught with small amounts for personal use aren't
prosecuted. Instead, the Dutch Health Ministry parks official vans in front
of nightclubs and raves, offering free tests of Ecstasy pills to guard
against overdoses.

"The Dutch drug politics is mostly health politics, and users are
approached more as patients who are sick and need to be helped instead of
criminals who need to be put in jail," said Martin Witteveen, chief
national public prosecutor for southeastern Holland.

All of these factors influence the Dutch Parliament, which has opposed
drug-fighting methods it considers too draconian.

As a result, some law enforcement officials on both sides of the Atlantic
have privately accused the Dutch government of being soft on Ecstasy. They
criticize Dutch laws that virtually ban plea agreements and ignore
low-level street dealers and small-time smugglers such as Marco.

U.S. authorities arrest and prosecute street dealers, some of whom accept
plea deals and cooperate in exchange for shorter prison terms. "Squeezing"
such smaller players for information about higher-ups is a key tool.

In the Netherlands, plea bargains are extremely rare and "highly
controversial," said Witteveen, who last year was the first prosecutor in
the nation to have a plea deal approved by the Dutch Supreme Court.

Objections focus on the ethical quandaries plea agreements raise -- that
criminals should not be offered deals or receive reduced sentences.

With no prospect to reduce their time behind bars, lower-level drug
operatives in Holland have no incentive to cooperate with authorities, said
several U.S. law enforcement officials.

"In the United States, often our investigation starts at the time of
arrest," a federal law enforcement official said privately. "Theirs [Dutch
investigations] end at the time of arrest."

Witteveen and several other Dutch officials said they had too few people to
fight low-level drug dealing as aggressively as they wanted. They also said
the government has made a strategic decision to concentrate on major
traffickers and producers.

But even when they pursue high-level dealers, other aspects of Dutch law
apparently get in the way. For instance, laws severely restrict the use of
undercover detectives, and this curtails most infiltration of criminal groups.

Such limitations are based on a historical distaste for "agent provocateur"
activities, Witteveen said. There are also philosophical disagreements in
the Netherlands about the ethics of allowing the police to break the law to
enforce it. And there is a fear that overall police integrity could be
corrupted by close contact with criminals.

"Basically, we believe it is a very serious matter for a police officer to
pretend to be a buyer or deliverer," Witteveen said.

As a result, the Dutch almost never use such standard U.S. drug enforcement
techniques as "buy-and-bust," in which officers pose as drug buyers and
arrest the dealer when the transaction is complete, or "controlled
deliveries," in which undercover officers intercept a mailed drug shipment,
deliver it, and arrest the recipient.

Western undercover officers tipped off to overseas connections have sought
to pose as potential Ecstasy buyers in the Netherlands. But that requires
permission from the Ministry of Justice and more than half a dozen national
agencies and local officials. In a situation that demands swift interaction
between buyer and seller, the multiagency Dutch approval process sometimes
takes up to six months, U.S. authorities complain.

Dutch officials say they are confident they are taking the right tack. The
United States' hard-nosed approach would run afoul of Parliament, some say,
because it is out of step with the Netherlands' collective mentality.

"I don't think the Dutch people like to be known as the world's largest
Ecstasy producer -- that's not something we're proud of," said Madelien de
Planque, a Dutch Embassy official in Washington. "But what works for the
Netherlands would probably not work for the United States. For us, it works."

What it may lead to, however, is another question.

The normally bucolic southern Dutch countryside has seen an increase in
violence the last four years amid trade wars between traffickers. In the
woods near Esbeek, gunmen executed four people in a country house. In
Tilburg, three people were killed when a man on a motorcycle fired a
submachine gun into their home. Dutch authorities believe these and other
recent slayings were Ecstasy-related assassinations.

"In the last few years, we've had dozens of killings, mostly in the south,"
Witteveen said.

Organized crime, already identified as a player in the Dutch drug trade, is
a looming threat for "deep penetration" into the Netherlands, warned
Varrone of the U.S. Customs Service.

He challenged the Dutch to do more.

"Do you want to put yourself at risk for the corrupting power of money?"
Varrone asked.

A Dutch Detective Has Some Success

The nerve center of the Dutch Ecstasy counteroffensive lies 30 miles east
of Esbeek in an industrial area of Eindhoven. Inside an undistinguished
concrete building that once housed offices for a natural gas utility, Peter
Reijnders talks about the synthetic chemical concoction that has come to
dominate his professional life.

"Ecstasy in the Netherlands is a hard drug, as is cocaine and heroin," said
Reijnders, a police officer who has been appointed the Netherlands' first
Ecstasy czar. "It is not as harmless as everybody thinks it is."

Affable and polished, Reijnders, 41, travels frequently to assure others
that the Dutch are serious about fighting Ecstasy. A day earlier, he was in
Paris meeting with police. The week before, he was at an Ecstasy conference
in Stockholm, Sweden.

"This is a form of organized crime, and organized crime is always hard to
fight," he said. "And it is hard to dismantle these types of organizations."

Reijnders heads the Synthetic Drug Unit of the Dutch police, a team of 50
agents from the national police, customs, domestic intelligence, and other
agencies. Earlier in the day, he was in the Hague, meeting with government
ministers to request additional funding and 30 percent more manpower.

The drug unit goes after the major producers and traffickers, but employs a
global strategy of looking at "the whole chain of activities" involved in
the production and distribution of Ecstasy, Reijnders said. That includes
the importation of chemicals and machines that make the tablets, their
production in secret labs, and their export overseas.

Ecstasy is made by mixing several government-controlled "precursor"
chemicals in pressure chambers with solvents and acids. The days-long
process produces an average of 20 to 30 kilograms of Ecstasy a day. Some of
the larger labs pump out up to 100 kilograms a day.

The drug is generally made from a precursor chemical called piper methyl
ketone or refined from sassafras oil. It is then reacted with methylamine.
A liquid product called Ecstasy "oil" is produced, which is then dried with
solvents into a powder. The powder is combined with a binding agent and
formed into Ecstasy tablets. Metal stamps are then used to imprint designs
on each tablet, often of cartoon characters or popular product logos.

Among the countries making the chemicals are Poland, Romania, Vietnam, and
China, where government controls are more lax and the possibility of
finding corrupt officials is greater than in the West, U.S. and European
law enforcement authorities said.

The controlled chemicals are commonly smuggled into the Netherlands either
by ship to Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe and a 40-mile drive from
southeastern Holland, or overland by truck in barrels hidden among
legitimate cargo. This takes advantage of virtually nonexistent frontier
checks in the 15 European Union countries, from Greece to Britain.

"When it enters the Union, we generally have no more border controls,"
Reijnders said. "It's very difficult."

Ecstasy makers generally spread their risks -- and make police work tougher
- -- by splitting the phases of production: basic chemistry at one location,
tablet production at another, packaging and distribution at a third, said
Marianne Van Ewijck, a member of the Synthetic Drug Unit.

But in a major coup last fall, Dutch police at the Belgian border seized a
Portuguese truck hauling nearly 2,200 gallons of the piper methyl ketone --
enough to make 112 million Ecstasy tablets -- that had been offloaded in
Lisbon from a ship from China.

In addition to drug counts, the Dutch police now charge Ecstasy producers
with environmental crimes -- for dumping chemical wastes -- or criminal as
the Mercedes-Benz logo or cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse and
Woody Woodpecker.

The drug unit also looks for drug proceeds and money laundering, and then
tries to seize property and cash. Again, however, Dutch law makes seizures
more difficult to obtain than they are in the United States.

Despite such obstacles, Reijnders' team earns praise from European and U.S.
law enforcement, including agents at the DEA's office at The Hague.

"The Synthetic Drug Unit is doing an exceedingly good job," said Mike
Stephenson, chief intelligence officer at Interpol's drug section in Lyon,
France. "They've recognized they've got a problem on their doorstep, and
they're dealing with it."

One way to gauge the effectiveness of Reijnders' team is to look at the
rising number of Ecstasy shipments that European and U.S. authorities
intercept, Stephenson said. Many of the tips leading to those seizures "are
coming from Dutch intelligence," he said.

Still, the U.S. government remains concerned about the rapidly rising
numbers of Ecstasy seizures on American soil.

In April, State Department officials met with a Dutch delegation that
included Reijnders, senior members of the foreign, justice, and health
ministries, and the nation's top prosecutor and police officials.

Afterward, the Netherlands said it would assign a Justice Ministry official
and two police intelligence officers to its embassy in Washington to help
coordinate Ecstasy investigations and other efforts with their American
counterparts.

Three weeks after the meeting, the Dutch government outlined a plan to
spend $80 million to attack Ecstasy production within its borders.

Dutch customs will get new X-ray scanners to screen outbound travelers at
Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and export cargo in Rotterdam. And the
government says it plans to increase public education about Ecstasy's risks
through schools, television, and advertising.

"We are intensifying our efforts," Peters said. "We are taking the
production and trade of Ecstasy very seriously. We are putting our money
where our mouth is."