GROUPS PUSH ECSTASY SAFETY

CHICAGO - One dead after a party in suburban Chicago. Two more in
Memphis, Tenn., and another two in Portland.

The fatal consequences of Ecstasy - an illegal drug that some say is
this decade's version of LSD - are becoming increasingly apparent
nationwide, further stirring the debate about how to deal with the
large numbers of young people who are using it.

"It's the hottest drug going right now," says Michelle, a 19-year-old
former Ecstasy user from New York who is now in rehab and spoke on the
condition that her last name not be used. "Anybody can get it
anywhere, anytime."

While it is most often associated with the dance parties - or "raves"
- - federal officials say the drug also known as MDMA is so readily
available that teens can buy it at school and on the street corner.

A survey of American teens released in February found that one in four
questioned said they had a friend or classmate who had used Ecstasy,
and 17 percent said they knew more than one user. It was the first
time the nonprofit National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
conducted a survey on the drug.

In recent months, Dr. Vasilios Pitsios says he has treated patients as
young as 14 who have arrived unconscious at the emergency room at
Saint Vincent Hospital, in the heart of Manhattan's club scene. He
says many have traveled to town from New Jersey and Long Island. And
two have died on his watch.

Pitsios says he has a frank talk with those who survive. "But how much
of that sticks." he asks. "It's probably very little."

Some young people are taking matters into their own hands, preaching
"harm reduction" methods that they hope can save lives. Rather than
telling others to just say no, they believe it is more realistic to
give users information about Ecstasy that, they say, can lessen the
drug's damage.

"It's obvious that zero tolerance simply doesn't work," says Andrew
Epstein, a senior at Amherst College in Massachusetts who helped
organize an information session about Ecstasy on his campus this week
Among the tips he and others are spreading to young people nationwide:
Stay hydrated to avoid severe, and sometimes deadly,
overheating.

They also tell users to avoid "stacking," or taking more than one
tablet in a night to enhance the drug's euphoric effect.

Epstein says he first tried Ecstasy when he was 17 but has cut back
from nearly monthly use to two or three times a year.

Steve Svoboda, a 24-year-old Web site designer from Chicago, says he
has done the same.

"If it's used sparingly and people know the risks, I believe the
potential for harm is greatly reduced," says Svoboda, who heads
Chicago's chapter of a California-based harm-reduction group called
DanceSafe.

Among other things, the group offers to test Ecstasy tablets for other
drugs that police and health officials say are increasingly being
passed off as Ecstasy. In February, for example, police in Fairfax
County, Va., confiscated hundreds of Ecstasy pills laced with the drug
PCP.

"When somebody tells me they've taken Ecstasy these days, I have no
idea what they've taken," says Dr. Charles Grob, director of child and
adolescent psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance,
Calif.

Grob, who conducted the first Food and Drug Administration-approved
study of MDMA's effects in mid-1990s, says the furor over the drug has
overshadowed its potential as a psychiatric treatment for such
ailments as post-traumatic stress disorder.