ECSTASY DRUG TRADE TURNS VIOLENT

The Rave Culture's 'Peace And Love' Pill Bloodies The Suburbs As Dealers
Battle For Turf And Profits

Ecstasy, the "peace and love" drug of the rave party culture, is
igniting violent turf wars among drug dealers that authorities say
resemble the battles over crack cocaine that devastated urban areas in
the 1980s.

But with Ecstasy there is a big difference: Its primary buyers -- and
many of its low-level dealers -- are teenagers and college kids from
middle- and upper-income families, rather than impoverished addicts.

As a result, America's suburbs are being hit with Ecstasy-related
drive-by shootings, executions and assaults as violent international
crime groups stake claims to the Ecstasy market. The gangs are lured by
the drug's enormous profit potential. A single Ecstasy pill that costs
less than $ 1 to make can be sold for up to $ 30.

To reach Ecstasy's typical customers, authorities say, drug rings are
recruiting middle-class suburban kids to peddle the pills. These dealers
move easily among young ravers, many of whom consider the burst of
energy and warm-all-over high they get from Ecstasy to be the perfect
complement to all-night dancing and the raver mantra "PLUR," an acronym
for peace, love, unity and respect.

But there's nothing warm and fuzzy about the increasingly dangerous
business of Ecstasy. In a marketplace dominated more and more by
competing organized crime groups, inexperienced suburban dealers often
find themselves in over their heads, police say. Russian and Israeli
crime groups are the biggest players in the Ecstasy trade; Colombian and
Dominican groups are gaining ground.

"There are great amounts of kids who have become drug dealers, kids who
have never before been involved in any type of dealing," Miami police
Detective Eladio Paez says. "It's an easy market to get into. It's when
they are competing with real drug dealers that they get into trouble.
The lucky ones just get beat up and their pills taken."

Danny Petrole, 21, wasn't so lucky.

Petrole, a college student and part-time floral deliveryman, was gunned
down in March near his town house on a quiet cul-de-sac in Prince
William County, Va., about 25 miles south of Washington, D.C.

Police investigating the slaying discovered a Danny Petrole his family
never knew. There was almost $ 18,000 in the trunk of his Honda. In the
three-story town house he had just purchased with his family's help,
police seized a shotgun, more than $ 100,000 in cash, 60 pounds of
marijuana worth $ 200,000 and 4,000 Ecstasy pills worth about $ 100,000.

The suspect in the slaying, Owen Merton Barber IV, 21, of Chantilly,
Va., grew up in Prince William and attended a county high school. County
police believe Barber was a rival drug dealer.

Authorities say the incident was typical of the violence they are seeing
linked with Ecstasy.

"The level of violence with Ecstasy hasn't come to the same level of
other drugs, but I think that Ecstasy is in its infancy stage still,"
says Roger Aarons, manager of the U.S. Customs Ecstasy Task Force. "As
more dealers get involved, violence is going to increase. It's just the
nature of the drug game."

Few law enforcement agencies keep statistics on Ecstasy-related
violence, but officials across the nation point to recent incidents that
they say highlight the rise in such crimes:

* In Cook County, Ill., sheriff's deputies investigating the execution
of a 16-year-old boy arrested two members of a suburban youth gang. A
farm worker found the body of Vu Hoang, a high school junior, near a
barn outside Elgin, 38 miles northwest of Chicago. He had a single
gunshot wound in his head.

Police said the gang members had questioned Hoang about missing Ecstasy
pills worth $ 10,000 because they thought he might know the thief. The
suspects were charged with murder.

* In March, police in Nassau County, N.Y., charged Mark Petronio, 36, of
Valley Stream, a New York City suburb, with murdering a 23-year-old
Ecstasy dealer from Mineola, another New York suburb. Police say that
Petronio, thinking the dealer had shortchanged him, stomped him to
death.

* In June, Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Customs agents in
New York dismantled a gang that traveled from rave to rave, shaking down
suburban kids who were high on Ecstasy.

The gang, which called itself the Brooklyn Terror Squad or BTS,
"terrorized rave parties throughout the Eastern seaboard and in
Florida," says Linda Lacewell, an assistant U.S. attorney in New York.
The gang beat up and robbed ravers, stole their drugs and then resold
them at the same parties, she says.

Ten gang members have pleaded guilty to various drug charges and are
awaiting sentencing.

'Like Taking Candy From A Baby'

"When these people (high on Ecstasy) are in these raves, they are
basically unconscious," says Felix Jimenez, special agent in charge of
New York's DEA office. "It's like taking candy from a baby."

Zoned-out ravers "are easy targets," Paez says. "They think nothing bad
is going to happen. Those people who want to go out there and take
advantage of these people have an open market. They can pick and choose
their victims."

The U.S. government in 1985 classified Ecstasy, also known as MDMA (for
its scientific name, methylenedioxy-methamphetamine), as a Schedule 1
illicit drug with no medical benefit.

Most of the pills are manufactured in illegal drug labs in northern
Europe and smuggled into the USA. The tiny pills are stamped with
cartoon characters, peace symbols and brand names and logos meant to
entice young users.

Recent studies have shown that Ecstasy can harm brain mechanisms that
control sleep, sexual function, memory, appetite and mood.

Federal officials still devote far more time to tracking cocaine and
heroin, but they have dramatically stepped up their efforts to stop the
Ecstasy trade. In 1995, agents from Customs and the DEA seized a few
hundred thousand pills of Ecstasy. Last year, the agencies confiscated
more than 11 million pills.

Meanwhile, rising concern over Ecstasy has led Congress to beef up
penalties for trafficking in Ecstasy. The new guidelines, which became
mandatory in federal courts on May 1, triple the potential jail terms
for people caught with 800 or more pills.

Previously, an Ecstasy dealer caught with 800 pills (typically worth
about $ 20,000) could have been sentenced to nearly two years in federal
prison. Now, that dealer would have to serve at least five years and
three months, if convicted. For 8,000 pills or more, a convicted dealer
would be sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.

Crime analysts expect the violence associated with Ecstasy to play out
differently than the inner-city crack wars, in part because the drug's
effect on users is different, says Donald Vereen, deputy director of the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Crack often makes users violent; Ecstasy makes users hyperactive but
non-violent and affectionate.

Crack grew popular among poor people who often stole to feed their
habits. Ecstasy users are more likely to have the financial resources to
maintain their habits without resorting to crime, health analysts say.

Crack also is highly addictive. Scientists aren't sure whether Ecstasy
users become physically addicted to the drug, but they do know that
regular users must increase their doses to continue to get high.

"Ecstasy users are mostly college-age students," says Lt. Bruce Adams of
the New Orleans Police Department's narcotics section, which is trying
to shutter the city's rave clubs. "Quite a number of them have the money
to finance their habits, so you don't see them committing crimes to pay
for it. With other drugs, we have users trying to rob dealers and
getting hurt for it."

But the networks that smuggle, distribute and sell Ecstasy often are the
same cartels that have moved crack or heroin, officials say.

Cartels aren't loyal to any one drug, says Aarons of U.S. Customs.
"They're not in it because they like cocaine or heroin," he says. "They
like money."

Transporting Ecstasy pills is easier and less expensive than moving
unwieldy bales of marijuana or bags of cocaine, Customs agents say. Drug
couriers mail the pills or hide them on their person and in suitcases.

One alleged cocaine distributor became one of the primary Ecstasy
dealers in the Northeast, officials say. U.S. Customs agents say Frank
Furino, 34, of Quogue, N.Y., switched from marijuana and cocaine once he
developed a more profitable Ecstasy-smuggling route from Amsterdam,
Netherlands.

When police raided Furino's $ 650,000 home in July, they seized 20 guns.
Furino, charged with drug conspiracy and participating in a continuing
criminal enterprise, is awaiting trial.

"There's going to be organized crime where there is lots of money to be
made," Vereen says. "The violence usually is related to how intense the
competition is."

He predicts that, as was the case with crack, drug rings that deal
Ecstasy will battle for turf until sharp lines are drawn around
distribution territories.

Meanwhile, ravers say their party scene is getting rougher, largely
because of the crowd chasing the money Ecstasy can generate.

One raver who calls herself BaBy JeSsIkAh187 posted this plea on
Ravernews Dreambook, an Internet message board: "The scene in NYC is
startin to get type corrupted! All these crews and gangs . . . out to
ruin the party."

Ecstasy's Silent Invasion

Prince William County, a rapidly growing suburb of Washington, has no
rave scene and not much of a club scene.

Ecstasy crept in quietly but spread quickly. In 1999, Prince William
police worked fewer than two dozen Ecstasy cases. In 2000, they handled
122.

None involved Danny Petrole. Police didn't know him. His father, Dan
Petrole Sr., is a former criminal investigator for the U.S. Secret
Service who now heads the criminal investigations unit for the
Department of Veterans Affairs. He says he saw nothing to make him
suspect his son was involved with drugs.

Danny Petrole's parents discouraged him from buying the town house; they
thought the financial burden would be too much. But Petrole went ahead
anyway, telling them he could handle it.

"Danny was always an entrepreneurial kid," his father says now,
recalling that his son was a day-trader in the stock market. "He always
said he didn't want to do a 9-to-5 job. I guess he hid (his drug
dealing) from his family and he didn't want to hurt us. I never even
heard him mention Ecstasy."

Danny Petrole enjoyed all the advantages of being from a financially
secure family. He played on a traveling soccer team in high school and
went away to college. When he returned home after his freshman year, he
enrolled at a community college. He attended church, had a serious
girlfriend and visited often with his parents and younger brothers.

Nevertheless, his father seems to understand how Danny could get caught
up in drugs.

"There's fast money out there. There's demand," he says. "As teenagers
and young adults, they don't have the maturity to look past that. As
much as I'm saddened by some of the decisions he made, I forgive him. He
loved his family dearly."