U.S. PANEL WEIGHS TOUGHER PENALTIES FOR 'ECSTASY'

Proposals For Sentencing Dealers Aimed At Fighting Pill's Popularity Among
Young

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is fashioning a significant increase in
penalties for people who import or sell "ecstasy," a move that would
elevate the party pill used by hundreds of thousands of adolescents into
the upper echelons of illegal drugs.

Responding to a command from Congress, the commission is considering
proposals that would make trafficking in ecstasy a more serious offense
than dealing powder cocaine.

Medical researchers opposed the step yesterday, testifying that ecstasy --
its purest form is known as MDMA -- is not as dangerous as cocaine, heroin
or methamphetamine.

"MDMA is less likely to cause violence than alcohol, less addictive than
cocaine or tobacco and less deadly than heroin," said New York University
psychiatrist Julie Holland, who works in Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric
emergency room. "I see alcoholics and crack addicts every time I go to
work. I do not see people whose lives have been ruined by MDMA."

Commissioners may vote as soon as today on new guidelines. Members, who set
sentencing guidelines for federal judges, have been inundated with
competing pleas in the months since Congress ordered stricter punishment to
combat growing use of the "hug drug," a stimulant combined with a mild
hallucinogen.

Sometimes used in psychotherapy before the drug was outlawed in the 1980s,
MDMA is especially popular at weekend rave parties, where a tablet can sell
for $20 to $40.

"The statistics have risen tremendously. You see it in cities, you see it
in rural areas," Joseph Keefe, the Drug Enforcement Administration's
operations director, said in an interview. "In 2000, Customs reported
seizing 9.3 million MDMA tablets, compared with 400,000 in 1997."

Ecstasy is "quickly becoming one of the most abused drugs in the United
States," Robert S. Mueller, acting deputy attorney general, testified
yesterday.

"The damage this drug can produce is significant and long-term," said
Mueller, once the District's chief homicide prosecutor. "We have an
opportunity to stop this growing problem before it becomes an epidemic, and
the proposal put forth by the commission would very much help."

A proposal published for comment by the Sentencing Commission would make
the penalty for selling 100 grams of ecstasy the same as the one for
selling 100 grams of heroin. Each could draw a five-year prison term.

Under a more recent, widely discussed option, the sale of 200 grams -- or
about 800 tablets -- of ecstasy would be a crime punishable by five years
in prison. Also possible is a slightly more lenient sentencing guideline
that would resemble the penalty for selling powdered cocaine, which is five
years for 500 grams.

Today, only someone who imports or sells about 11,000 pills would be
subject to five years behind bars under the sentencing guidelines.

Diana Murphy, the commission chair and a U.S. appellate judge, said
yesterday that the penalties must increase. One goal is to satisfy Congress
and prevent lawmakers from creating new mandatory minimum sentences, which
she described as "a very crude kind of thing that binds a judge."

"If we don't follow that directive or satisfy Congress that we've done it
in a reasoned way," Murphy said, "their remedy is a mandatory minimum."

Ecstasy's clinical history and its relationship with other drugs occupied
much of yesterday's public hearing. Researchers challenged assertions that
MDMA poses long-term physiological risks and creates effects similar to
hallucinogenic drugs such as mescaline.

David E. Nichols, a Purdue University professor of molecular pharmacology,
described MDMA's "low addiction potential" and reported that users
typically do not ingest the drug daily. He said the pleasure reported by
many users tends to disappear after two or three days of continuous use,
making severe abuse of the drug less likely.

Some studies have shown, however, that MDMA can inspire use of more than
one session a week and more than one tablet a session, as the Federation of
American Scientists put it. The organization, which does not favor
increased penalties, also cited "growing laboratory evidence that MDMA is
capable of causing lasting neurological changes."

Opponents of stiff sentences argued that ecstasy's dangers and collateral
damage do not merit prison terms more commonly associated with opiates and
hallucinogens. Holland, who has worked weekends for five years in the
Bellevue psychiatric trauma unit, said that less than 1 percent of the
psychotic disorders triggered or deepened by substance abuse involved ecstasy.

"Not only are MDMA-related cases a small percentage of all drug-related
emergency room visits, but a large percentage of these cases are not
life-threatening," Holland testified. "The most common adverse effects from
acute MDMA intoxication are anxiety or panic reactions."

Staff researcher Lynn Davis contributed to this report.