DRUG OFFICIALS DESPAIR OVER UPSURGE IN ECSTASY

LOS ANGELES - It was finding an Israeli drug dealer dead in a car
trunk at Los Angeles International Airport 18 months ago that gave the
authorities here the first hint that the club drug Ecstasy was
becoming a serious problem. He had been killed by two hit men sent
from Israel, said officials of the Drug Enforcement
Administration.

Then there was the shipment of 2.1 million Ecstasy pills, worth $40
million on the street, that the U.S. Customs Service seized at the
airport last July. The pills, labeled clothing, arrived on an Air
France flight from Paris, intended for another Israeli dealer here.
The authorities say it was the world's largest Ecstasy bust.

And now law enforcement officials say they have seen another worrisome
development this year. At large, all-night dance parties called raves,
drawing thousands of young people to the desert east of Los Angeles,
rival gangs have fought over the sale of Ecstasy. At one rave at a
fairgrounds at Lake Perris in March, 102 people were arrested on
charges of selling Ecstasy, assault or resisting arrest, according to
the Drug Enforcement Administration.

What is happening in Los Angeles mirrors what is occurring across much
of the nation, law enforcement officials and drug experts say. Not
only is the use of Ecstasy exploding, more than doubling among 12th
graders in the past two years, but it also is spreading well beyond
its origin as a party drug for affluent white suburban teen-agers to
virtually every ethnic and class group, and from big cities such as
New York and Los Angeles to rural Vermont and South Dakota.

At the same time, the huge profits to be made - a tablet that costs 50
cents to manufacture in underground labs in the Netherlands can be
sold for $25 in the United States - have set off increasingly violent
turf wars among Ecstasy dealers.

"With drugs, it's always about the money," said Bridget Brennan, the
special narcotics prosecutor for New York. "And the dealers are
starting to see there is so much money in Ecstasy that more people are
getting involved, and with that comes more violence."

Police records show that homicides linked to Ecstasy dealing have
occurred in recent months in Norfolk, Va.; in Elgin, Ill., outside
Chicago; and in Valley Stream, N.Y., outside New York City.

This spring, in Bristow, Va., a suburb of Washington, a 21-year-old
college student, Daniel Robert Petrole Jr., was shot 10 times in the
head as he sat in his car outside a new town house he had recently
bought. According to court records, the local police believed that
Petrole was responsible for distributing more than $1.5 million in
Ecstasy and marijuana in Prince William County. Two young dealers who
worked with Petrole have since been arrested and charged with killing
him.

In New York last month, Salvatore Gravano, the former Gambino crime
family hit man, pleaded guilty to running a multimillion-dollar
Ecstasy ring in Arizona, where he was living under the federal witness
protection program. Court documents showed that Gravano was accused of
hatching four homicide plots to consolidate his control of the Arizona
drug market, and that his organization was being supplied by Ilan
Zarger, a drug dealer based in Brooklyn who had ties to the Israeli
mob.

Most Ecstasy is produced in the Netherlands or Belgium and smuggled
into the United States by Israeli or Russian organized gangs, either
flown in as air cargo or carried on commercial flights by couriers,
often dancers recruited from topless nightclubs, according to drug
enforcement and Customs Service officials.

Some Dominican groups also have become involved recently, using their
own established routes, and they now sell Ecstasy along with heroin
and cocaine from drug houses in Washington Heights in Manhattan to
buyers who arrive by car from as far away as Pennsylvania, Maryland
and Virginia, the officials say.

Because it is sold as pills, Ecstasy is much easier to smuggle than
heroin, cocaine or marijuana, the authorities say. Large imported
shipments, originally flown into New York, Los Angeles or Miami, are
then broken down and sent out by regular overnight delivery services
to mid-level dealers in other cities.

Brennan, the New York narcotics prosecutor, said Ecstasy was also
widely available on the Internet. Last year, her office arrested a man
in Orlando, Fla., who had been selling Ecstasy on a site called House
of Beans to customers in New York.

Seizures of Ecstasy by the Customs Service have jumped sharply, to 9.3
million pills in 2000, up from only 400,000 pills in 1997, said
Charles Winwood, the acting commissioner of the Customs Service.

The law enforcement officials and drug experts do not suggest that
Ecstasy will lead to the same levels of violence or social turmoil as
crack cocaine did in the late 1980s, when thousands of teen-age
dealers armed themselves with handguns and many mothers neglected
their children.

For one thing, Ecstasy does not cause the same dangerous changes in
mood as crack does.

For another, crack gave only a brief high, driving addicts back to the
street repeatedly in search of another dose and often leading them to
rob or steal to support their habit.

Ecstasy instead induces a high of up to six hours, enhancing feelings
of empathy and closeness, its users say.

But interviews with drug experts and with teen-age Ecstasy addicts in
treatment programs here show that the drug, known scientifically as
MDMA, both a stimulant and a hallucinogen, can be disruptive and
expose them to violence.

"We are dancing with danger here, because the kids and their parents
think of Ecstasy as a benign party drug," said Michele Leonhart, the
special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Los
Angeles office.

"They don't see what we see, that it's a neurotoxin with serious side
effects, that people die from overdoses and that some of the dances in
the desert are no longer just dances, they're like violent crack
houses set to music."