ECSTACY HITS ARKANSAS

SPRINGDALE -- Party staff patted down partygoers and searched
backpacks at the door when a group of four University of Arkansas
students threw an all-night, electronic dance music party recently at
a Rodeo of the Ozarks building in Springdale.

Two Washington County sheriff's office deputies watched the crowd.

"Do not come to our events to buy or sell drugs," a flier warned.
"You will be ejected."

The source of concern was ecstasy, an illegal but increasingly
popular drug that, along with pounding music, flashing lights and
young people, is associated with all-night parties known as "raves."

Worries about the drug are growing across the state and nation, and
promoters of Northwest Arkansas' budding electronic dance music scene
don't want to be accused of providing a venue for the drug's use.
Police also want to make sure the drug doesn't find a niche in
Northwest Arkansas.

Pacifiers were forbidden at the March 3 party because ecstasy users
sometimes chew them to avoid the drug's teeth-grinding effects. Dust
masks were banned because users coat them with decongestant rub,
which supposedly enhances the drug's effects.

"We feel very, very strongly about this," said 22-year-old Justin
Rich, one of the founders of a company called dancenhance, which
threw the March 3 party. "We have a company image to uphold, and we
want to be known as a company that provides safe entertainment."

Ecstasy followed the rave movement from Europe to the United States
in the late 1980s and is growing faster in popularity among high
school students than any other drug, according to an annual survey by
the University of Michigan. Ecstasy use among 12th-graders nationwide
increased last year to 11 percent from 8 percent, surpassing cocaine
and heroin but still behind marijuana and amphetamines, according to
the survey.

Last year, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Customs
Service seized 11 million tablets of the drug, up from 450,000
tablets in 1997.

Primarily used at parties by middle-class young people, the drug has
spread from big cities such as New York and Los Angeles to suburbs
and rural areas across the country, said Customs Service spokesman
Dean Boyd.

"The volume of this stuff coming in is dramatically increasing," he said.

State Crime Laboratory chemist Dan Hedges said the lab handled about
22 ecstasy cases last year, compared with few or none the year
before. The state Crime Laboratory handled 10 cases in the first
three months of this year, Hedges said.

Most of those cases were in Little Rock, where one promoter said his
all-night dance parties regularly draw up to 2,500 people. But the
drug has also crept into Northwest Arkansas.

Fayetteville police seized 745 pills in five arrests so far this
year, compared with two last year and none the year before. Police
said the most recent and largest bust came on Jan. 25 when they
arrested three men and seized 734 pills.

"It's something we really have to be concerned about," said Robin
Brown, who leads drug-counseling sessions for Ozark Guidance Center
in Springdale. "Just because we live in a rural setting, we can't
have the mind-set that we aren't going to be exposed to this problem.
That couldn't be further from the truth."

Formally known as methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, ecstasy has
hallucinogenic and amphetaminelike properties. The drug gives a user
a heightened sense of perception and empathy and the energy to dance
for hours by flooding the brain with seratonin. It also raises a
user's body temperature, sometimes causing overheating and, in rare
cases, death, said Jerry Frankenheim, a pharmacologist with the
National Institute on Drug Abuse in Rockville, Md.

Recent research by scientists at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
in Baltimore shows ecstasy also damages the brain, and causes memory
loss, and mood and sleep problems, Frankenheim said.

At the CD Lounge on Fayetteville's Dickson Street, a thin crowd of
rave enthusiasts gathered Wednesday night to watch a laser light
display and hear a disc jockey spin house, drum and bass, and techno
music. On the patio outside, three customers described their ecstasy
experiences on the condition they not be identified. The professed
users included a Springfield., Mo., disc jockey, an accountant and
mother of two, and a student at the University of Arkansas,
Fayetteville.

The student said she will graduate with honors in May. She said she's
used the drug about a half dozen times, usually at parties.

"For me, it's not an escape; it's a pleasure," she said. "It's
something that lets me relax and enjoy the whole experience of just
the small things, like the way the trees look and the air feels. It's
amazing."

She doesn't do it often, she said, because "it really wears down your
body. It takes a couple of days to recover." She and the other two
users said the high from the drug is followed by depression, which
experts said is caused by the depletion of the brain's seratonin.

The student said she knows people who use the drug regularly and have
become self-absorbed and depressed. They forget their family,
classwork and job responsibilities, she said.

"It's sad to see people who think it's a way of life," she said. Last
spring, students in Mary Wyandt's peer education class at the
University of Arkansas held a talk-show style seminar, titled "Sex
and X," on the dangers of ecstasy, Wyandt said.

One class member was a former user who stopped after she discovered
herself skipping classes and getting bad grades, Wyandt said. A few
other students have also confided they've used the drug, she said.

Brown said nearly everyone in his youth drug-counseling class has
used ecstasy. He's noticed its use among University of Arkansas
students for about five years. Lately, the drug has spread to users
as young as 12, he said. In high schools, he said, "it's very readily
available."

Fayetteville users are often first exposed to the drug at raves in
Little Rock or in other states and bring it back home, Brown said.
The drug is primarily used at parties and other special occasions
because of its high price and hallucinogenic effects, he said.

Some users come to depend on it, he said.

"All of a sudden, it becomes part of their self-esteem, and they
think they can't survive without it," Brown said.

Fort Smith police made their first major ecstasy-related bust last
year, after Los Angeles authorities intercepted a package of 300
pills headed to a Fort Smith apartment. Police searched the apartment
and arrested 11 people, two of whom were charged with felonies, said
Fort Smith police Capt. J.C. Rider. Joshua Little, 25, was sentenced
on drug charges to five years in prison. Aaron Hargrove, 21, was
given a five-year suspended sentence.

In Washington and Benton counties, most of the ecstasy users are in
Fayetteville's college crowd, police said. Police in Bentonville,
Rogers and Springdale couldn't recall any ecstasy-related arrests.
Fayetteville's first was last year, when a 44-year-old woman sold two
pills to an undercover officer for $100. She was sentenced in July to
five years' probation.

In the Jan. 25 bust, 4th Judicial District Task Force officers
learned that three men had been supplying most of Fayetteville's
ecstasy, Sgt. Mike Reynolds said. Two men, Thomas Alexander
Larzelere, 24, and Bryan Levinsky, 24, were arrested on charges of
selling the drug from an apartment on Campbell Avenue, Reynolds said.
The drug also was sold from a Robin Street residence occupied by
Jason Gray, 23, Reynolds said.

The men are accused of importing the ecstasy from Dallas, he said.
Levinsky and Gray pleaded innocent to drug charges from the arrest.

Larzelere is scheduled to enter a plea on April 17.

Rave enthusiasts and police say ecstasy has been hard to get since
the men's arrest.

"We made a slight impact -- we'll pat ourselves on the back for
that," Reynolds said. "But who knows how long it will last."

In Little Rock, narcotics detectives work nearly all raves. Little
Rock police Sgt. James Stephens said police make about as many
ecstasy arrests at raves as they do marijuana arrests at rock
concerts.

Promoters discourage the use of the word "rave" to describe their
parties because of its association with ecstasy and other drugs.
Chuck "dj chaos" Menefee, who runs cybertribe, a company that
sponsors parties at the state fairgrounds in Little Rock, said he's
trying to keep drugs out of his events. Disc jockeys from across the
country ask to work at them because, unlike raves in some other
cities, partygoers come for music and not drugs, Menefee said.

"The way I look at it, Arkansas is the last to get everything,"
including the electronic dance music craze, Menefee said. "This time,
we've kind of got a way we can learn from the mistakes everyone else
has made and do it right."