GAMERS GET FIX WITH VIRTUAL DRUG TRAFFICKING

Seth Lasser is no drug dealer. He just plays one on his Palm Pilot.

Lasser, 25, a New York City management consultant, is a fan of Dope Wars,
one of the world's hottest - and most controversial - computer games. More
than 2 million Internet users have downloaded the game, which is an
exercise in free enterprise that allows players to live vicariously as drug
dealers in one of 10 cities worldwide.

Players strive to become rich by buying and selling cocaine, crack,
Ecstasy, heroin, acid or other drugs. In the process, they are hounded by
loan sharks who threaten to toss delinquent borrowers from windows, and
armed police officers who chase them. Players also must respond to changes
in market conditions, such as a drug bust that inflates the price of heroin
tenfold, or pharmacy robberies that flood the market with cheap Ecstasy. To
protect themselves, players can use their money to buy guns and bullets.
Successful players can stockpile enough cash to pay for treatment at a
hospital if they are wounded.

To the dismay of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and parents
nationwide, the game's popularity continues to grow, nearly two years after
it first popped up on CNET and other Internet sites that offer free
software downloads.

More than 1.7 million people have gotten a copy of the game from CNET,
where the game has been on the "Top 50" list for 97 weeks. This week, it
was the third most popular download, up from fifth last week.

The version for handheld computers such as Palm Pilots is the second most
downloaded program for such devices, behind only the dictionary .

"It really took us by surprise. It's such a simple game," says George
LaTourette, a content production manager for CNET, which maintains the Web
site www.download.com.

"It's a little bit of a shocker at first because of the content, but
really, it's pretty much like a stock-trading game," he says. "You buy low,
you sell high."

Lasser sees it as an "interesting theoretical business game" with a twist.
"Drug dealing is comparable to trading any other type of commodity and
imagining the market forces that act upon it," he says. "It's the quirks of
the market that make it interesting."

Ian Wall, 32, a computer consultant from Queens, N.Y., who modernized a
1980s version of the game and shared it on the download.com Web site, says,
"We all like to get our thrills vicariously. A game about dealing drugs
allows you to do it without really doing it. I thought it would be a bit of
a giggle for the office."

The DEA isn't amused.

"This game, at least subtly, if not overtly, glamorizes being a drug
dealer," says special agent John Lunt, chief of demand reduction.

"It's absolutely sending the wrong message to whomever gets into that site.