ECSTASY FROM OVERSEAS TO OUR STREETS

Awash In Ecstasy; Club Drug From Overseas Increasingly Found In Local Schools

It takes two minutes to find a student on a Long Island high-school campus
who knows all about ecstasy.

Ten minutes and a promise of anonymity can lead to a teenage user who can
flip open a cell phone and get the illegal pills as easily as ordering a pizza.

"If you can get pot, you can get E," one Cold Spring Harbor athlete said.

"Weed and X go well together, like milk and cookies," said a student at
SUNY-Stony Brook.

In random interviews over several weeks, young Long Islanders and New
Yorkers agreed that the brain-altering, feel-good stimulant known as
"ecstasy," "E" or "X" is no longer confined to nightclubs, where it became
a hit more than a decade ago. It has slithered out of the thumping music,
clandestine rave-club scene and into the general population.

"It's not just limited to the club scene or these dance marathons," said
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. "The kids are using it at house
parties and weekend parties."

Ecstasy, a neurotoxin whose chemical name is MDMA
(methylenedioxymethamphetamine), comes primarily from the Netherlands,
where it is mass-produced, and from Belgium, in part because its component
chemicals are not as tightly controlled in those countries. According to
U.S., European and Israeli law-enforcement officials, it often is
trafficked to the United States through a circuit dominated by Israeli
criminals, often using couriers who, until recently, fell outside of police
suspicion: Hasidic Jews.

With its easy manufacture, relatively benign reputation and huge markup (it
costs about 25 to 50 cents to make one pill, which can sell for $15 to $40,
with an average price of $20), the ecstasy business has proved irresistible
to many not otherwise involved in drugs. Confiscations of "X" pills by
U.S. Customs last year were 12 times higher than they were just two years ago.

"There are a thousand Jimmy Pampinellas here on Long Island," said a Long
Island source, referring to Giacomo (Jimmy) Pampinella of Franklin Square,
a major ecstasy dealer recently sentenced to 70 months in prison. "The fact
of the matter is that this drug is a way of life here."

"It's Long Island. It's here, you're bored. Most people do whatever's
around," said a class of 2000 graduate of Valley Stream Central High.

"E" is a small pill often stamped with a manufacturer's logo. It lowers
inhibitions. It produces euphoria and heightened sensual awareness, with
few immediate side effects other than potentially dangerous dehydration
evidenced by overheating and a terrific thirst. In the 1970s, some
psychiatrists used it to get patients to loosen up, but it was outlawed in
1985 after it started appearing in nightclubs.

Many kids, rarely hearing reports of death or serious overdoses from MDMA
alone, think the drug is harmless.

"People think it's not as addictive as crack or heroin, so they do it,"
said a 22-year-old former ecstasy dealer from Hauppauge.

"It has every drug in it ... but I never heard of anything bad happening"
to anyone, said a female Walt Whitman High student, 16, who tried ecstasy
about five times.

Regardless of the perception, a drug being sold as ecstasy killed at least
six people in Florida this summer. A 19-year-old woman who died there in
August had a temperature of 104 degrees five hours after she died.

And the use of ecstasy or ecstasy mixed with other drugs is thought to have
led to at least two deaths in New York City and Long Island, including that
of James Lyons, 18, of Sound Beach, in 1999.

"It's a neurotoxin, brain poison," said Terry Horton, a doctor and vice
president of Phoenix House, a rehabilitiation center in Ronkonkoma. "They
take it because they hear about it from their friends. But what does a
14-year-old know?"

Scientists aren't as cavalier as youth about the possible long-term impact
of ecstasy, warning of memory loss and other negative effects on the brain.

Law-enforcement and drug-treatment specialists say "E" is a gateway drug to
harder drugs. And everyone agrees that pills sold as ecstasy often contain
other drugs as well, so the buyers have no idea what they are taking.

"Basically, I could say that ecstasy led me to a lot of other drugs," said
a 22-year-old woman from Sheepshead Bay who started using ecstasy when she
was 14 and moved on to heroin. "When you use ecstasy a lot, it starts
getting played out. The kick started lasting half an hour, 20 minutes, so
that I would have to take more. At a party, I would take five or six pills
two hours apart."

A survey released in November by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America
noted that marijuana use dropped for the third consecutive year, while
ecstasy use has doubled since 1995. One in 10 teens reported that they had
experimented with the drug, the survey found. The annual survey questioned
7,290 seventh-through 12th-graders nationwide.

Teenagers' experimental use of ecstasy is now on par with that of cocaine,
crack and LSD, outpacing experimental heroin use, the study found.

"I've known 12-year-olds to ask me about [buying] it,' said Jenna Pollock,
17, who was an honors student from East Islip who used to deal ecstasy
after school. "The last two or three years, I can't believe the amount of
people doing it at school. Everybody basically knows [because] you're
carrying around this big jug of water and you're grinding your teeth."

U.S. Customs confiscated at least 9.3 million ecstasy pills in the last
year, far more than ever before.

Despite those seizures, the supply is at record levels: About 2 million
pills are trafficked through New York airports every week, about 750,000 of
which are sold in the metropolitan area, the DEA estimates.

The young consumers of those pills know that ecstasy can make a user feel
euphoric. Adolescents say they like it because it erases inhibitions. They
forget their zits, weight, self-consciousness or what others think of them.
It makes a person want to touch and be touched (hence the nickname "the hug
drug"). Reminisce. Apologize. Have sex. The kids also know that rappers
such as Eminem, Lil Kim, DMX and the late Notorious B.I.G. have praised it.

Local youth can rattle off the price ranges, brand names of ecstasy and
tell which supersensory effects a pill gives by the colors and emblems
stamped on them. And they know where to get it.

"It's everywhere. It's really easy. All you got to do is know a phone
number," said the 14-year-old girl from a middle-class area of Staten
Island. Her father is a chef in a Russian restaurant. She entered rehab at
age 12.

"You feel, like, all good about yourself. You illusionize, you feel like
you're on top of the world," she said. I just started wasting all my money
on it. I just didn't care about anything anymore. All I wanted to do was
just get more."

She and her friends would pool their money for ecstasy, somtimes paying for
two or three tablets a day each.

The Suffolk narcotics division had only nine ecstasy cases in 1997 compared
to 61 last year, said Insp. Mark White, commander of the narcotics
division. Nassau's narcotics division had 54 ecstasy-related cases in 1999
compared to about four dozen in the first eight months of 2000. The city is
seeing significant increases as law-enforcement agencies focus on local
airports, which they suspect are traffickers' favorite entry points in the
United States.

"We've seen in the last six months to a year an increase in ecstasy use
among adolescents in the more affluent communities," said Avery Mehlman,
narcotics-bureau chief for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. "It's
definitely part of the whole club-culture scene. From my experience talking
to kids in the region, 13-, 14-, 15-year-old kids are experimenting with
ecstasy. The immediate source is peers, but the importation is coming from
very highly organized criminal enterprises."

Jenna Pollock was never caught selling the pills. Now recovering from
alcoholism, she wound up in several rehabilitation programs after the
courts stepped in to see why she missed so much school last year.

She and Sean, a North Babylon High graduate who asked that his real name
not be used, recently reminisced on the deck at the Phoenix House
rehabilitation center in Ronkonkoma about an ecstasy pill called "the
pigeon" that made several of their friends sick during the summer of 1999.
"People were just puking and puking. It was probably too much heroin, too
much MDMA," Sean said with a shrug.

"Ecstasy has so much stuff in it, it opens your eyes to other things. Some
kids will say, 'I did that and it had coke in it, so why don't I just do
coke,'" Jenna said. "Kids need to know from other kids what can happen.
They need to hear things out raw. Like they can die."

Rolling, as the ecstasy high is called, to all-night tingling sensations
could end up being a short-cut to the emergency room. Extreme cases of
ecstasy-induced dehydration can lead to seizures or convulsions, doctors say.

Nationwide, emergency-room visits linked to ecstasy use rocketed from 253
in 1994 to 2,850 in 1999, according to the Drug Abuse Warning Network.
There were nine ecstasy related deaths in 1999, up from one in 1994, the
organization reported.

Mark Howard, counselor at Phoenix House, believes the ecstasy craze is no
different from any past drug phases.

Teenagers have taken acid, sniffed glue, sniffed "Special K" (a cat
tranquilizer known as ketamine) inhaled laughing gas and sucked on aerosol
cans to have fun or escape the weirdness of adolescence. They take whatever
drugs they can get their hands on, and today, it happens to be ecstasy,
Howard said.

"Kids do drugs. Period. That's what people don't see," Howard said, adding
that many kids who go to rehab have used ecstasy but very rarely are they
admitted for ecstasy use alone. Those who end up in rehab are "garbage
heads," or those who have used a smorgasbord of drugs.

Five years ago, relatively few kids at the center had used ecstasy; now, a
majority have likely used it, he said.

But not all of the area's communities are heavily into ecstasy.

On Wednesday afternoons from about noon until 2 p.m., the Stony Brook
Student Union is packed for what is called "Campus Life." It's a time
designated for activities when vendors peddle cheap jewelry and posters,
peer health educators pass out condoms and fraternities and sororities
gather en masse.

During a recent session, four black students, all men ranging in age from
19 to 24, were eating chicken and pasta when a student dropped a flier for
a spring break ski trip on their lunch table. One of the guys nodded his
head at the flier. "It'll be there," he said, referring to ecstasy. "About
two years ago, it was at the out-of-reach level for black people, but it's
slowly increasing. At something like that [ski trip] of spring break,
you'll hear about it."

While an increasing number of black and Hispanic youth are trying the drug,
ecstasy use in those communities lags far behind use in white communities,
according to experts and students from communities such as Hempstead and
Central Islip.

Phoenix House officials say the difference in kids' drug choice is mostly
economic. The sentiment among minority youth who come from poorer
comminuties is, 'Why buy a $20 pill that will last four hours and is made
of a mystery mix of drugs when a person could get two $10 "dime" bags of
marijuana?

Money is a factor, but youth say drug choice is also cultural.

"Black kids will do a lot of crazy things, but they won't put their life on
the line messing with something like ecstasy," said sophomore Joy Botting
of Hempstead High. "With weed, they grow it, they bake it, they smoke it.
You never hear ... people say, 'Oh, they died from weed.'"

Rich, 19, a private-school graduate who goes to Nassau Community College,
said he doesn't take ecstasy with his Hispanic friends. "They say, 'You did
what? You're white, aren't you?'"

The medical dangers associated with MDMA do not apply to every ecstasy
pill, because a hit of ecstasy is basically a mystery pill until its
examined, police say. Any given pill could contain MDMA, other drugs,
baking soda or a lethal combination of "filler" ingredients meant to give
it a desired color, texture or sensation. And there's no way to tell
whether or not a pill was pressed in a laboratory setting or in some
teenager's basement.

The chemical makeup of the pills presents a problem for police, said Det.
Lt. Hall Coleman of the Suffolk Police narcotics division.

"Often, the pills fall outside the legal chemical definition of MDMA; that
means it's not illegal," Coleman said.

In New York, the sale of more than 125 milligrams or possession of more
than 625 milligrams is a felony punishable by a prison sentence of as much
as 8 years to life. Federal sentencing guidelines call for a prison term of
as much as 30 years for anyone caught trafficking large quantities.

Police involved in buy-and-bust stings have netted ecstasy pills that
contained cough medicine and caffeine. So far, they haven't found the LSD,
heroin or cocaine that teens believe are in some pills, Suffolk crime lab
chemists said.

Police, however, are not lulled into thinking they know the scope of the
problem. "We could be getting everybody who's selling or one-hundredth,"
said Det. Lt. John Wolff of Nassau police. "There's no way to know."

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ECTASY AT A GLANCE

Street names: Often call a club drug or party drug, ectasy is also known as
X, XTC, Adam, MDMA, clarity and essence.

Scientific name: 3, 4-methylenedioxymethampetamine (MDMA for short)

Taken as: Ecstasy is usually taken in tablet form, but it can also be
smoked, injected or taken in liquid form. Drug makers sometimes produce
tablets with their own identifying logos.

History: Ecstasy first appeared on the streets in the United States in the
1980s. The drug has gained in popularity, particularly for use at raves,
where the drug provides a high with the kind of energy often assciated with
dance and concert events.

What it is: MDMA is a synthetic drug, considered a hallucinogen with a
chemical structure similar to the stimulant methamphetamine. The drug can
produce both stimulant and psychedelic sensations.

Effects: Lessening of inhibitions, increase in energy, enchanced
self-confidence, enhanced sense of pleasure. The high may last several
minutes to an hour or more. Reportedly, this drug produces milder effects
than those produced by older hallucinogens such as LSD and mescaline.

Risks: The drug has been shown to interfere with the body's regulation of
serotnin, an organic compound believed to be a key in regulating mood,
memory, sleep and appetite. Ecstasy can trigger a number of negative
effects, sometimes weeks after the drug is taken, including: confusion,
depression, nausea, vomiting, psychiatric problems (such as paranoia),
hallucinations, blurred visiion, sleep problems, fainting, dimished sexual
ability, chills or sweating (including dehydration and hyperthermia),
restlessness, teeth clenching and muscle tension, heart and kidney failure.
In addition, long-term use has been associated with persistent memory problems.