ECSTASY RULES RAVE SCENE IN VANCOUVER

VANCOUVER -- Sarah's eyes bulge out like saucers and her smile is as
constant as her chatter.

"I'm really, really high right now," she says giggling on the floor
and hugging people she hardly knows.

Sarah, 16, has just popped an ecstasy pill at this Saturday night
rave, which costs up to $75 per ticket. It's her first time on "e."

"Jungle" music pounds away in the dimly lit room where images of alien
heads are projected onto screens.

"People are really cool," she says of the ravers at the all-night
dance party where no alcohol is served and most of the 3,000 people
have taken the illegal "love drug."

"Everyone's so nice," says Sarah, who's from Victoria and says her
parents don't know she's at the rave.

Her friends, A.J., Robin, Seth and Simon, are rubbing Vicks VapoRub on
her and each other because they say "e" enhances the senses and it
just feels, well, really cool.

She derives great pleasure from rubbing Seth's pants, which look like
they're made of faux fur.

"I feel so good," Sarah says of the designer drug that's often
manufactured in home laboratories and is also known by its chemical
name, MDMA.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she says to a reporter, whose pants she
starts to rub, smiling.

In an adjoining room, ravers are dancing to the constant thump thump
thump of the "trance" music churned out by DJs. Some of the dancers
are sucking on soothers because "e" makes them grind their teeth.

The bug-eyed ravers wear glow-sticks on their heads that look like
halos. They guzzle water and dance jerkily to the pounding beat.

Some are asleep in the middle of the dance floor littered with water
bottles. Layers of coats are piled on top of them, likely because
they've taken "e" containing "downers," says one raver.

Ravers, some as young as 14, are also flaked out on the floor or
leaning against the walls, as friends massage their neck and shoulders.

It's almost 5 a.m., and some have remained on the floor since
midnight.

Ashley Hughes, 22, who says she's a certified massage therapist, has
set up four massage tables to one side of the room.

Hughes, wearing flannel pyjamas over a midriff-revealing tank top,
says she has a business licence to work at the rave.

People pay up to $3 per minute to have their clothed bodies rubbed by
one of eight massage therapists, says Hughes.

Some ravers just want someone to talk to, she says.

"They're on 'e' and they don't know their limits."

Eight police officers and 50 security guards prowl around, checking to
see if the kids are all right.

They make their rounds to the three areas, including the "chill room"
upstairs, an auditorium where people are slumped over in chairs and a
few are dancing to the music piped in from below.

Ravers say they're not sure what's in the drugs they're taking but
that a group called DanceSafe should be allowed to test them.

The U.S.-based group operates at raves in 13 American cities and has
recently branched out to Vancouver.

DanceSafe volunteers have set up a booth at the rave to hand out
literature about ecstasy and other drugs.

They're not testing pills tonight because, they say, the RCMP have
threatened to arrest them for trafficking if they do.

DanceSafe has previously done testing in the Vancouver area by
scraping off some powder from pills offered to them by ravers. A
chemical mixture of sulphuric acid and formaldehyde is then dropped on
the powder.

The resulting colour within 10 seconds will determine if any of four
potentially harmful substances is present, DanceSafe volunteers say.

Nadia Van der Hayden, 18, a DanceSafe volunteer, says the group
provides "harm reduction" for ravers who are using ecstasy anyway.

By getting the drug tested, they have the option to take it or not --
even though the pill would be given back to the raver before it's
tested," Van der Hayden says.

"We don't condone or condemn it," she says of taking ecstasy, which
she has used herself.

Van der Hayden says the drug only causes euphoria and those who have
died after taking it have succumbed to dehydration because they didn't
drink enough water after dancing for hours.

But Cpl. Scott Rintoul, of the RCMP drug squad, says DanceSafe's tests
are extremely unreliable because they can't detect the presence of up
to 70 dangerous drugs that can be used as fillers in ecstasy pills.

That gives potential users a false sense of security and also puts
promoters, police, first-aid attendants and security at risk for being
named in a civil lawsuit if someone dies, Rintoul said.

He said the infrastructure of the rave scene in Vancouver is different
from other cities in North America. In Vancouver, promoters, city
police, the RCMP, a security firm and first-aid attendants work in
partnership.

Their goal is to keep the all-night dance parties fun while taking a
strong stance against drugs, Rintoul said.

"The drugs are extremely addictive and extremely deadly . . . we've
had four people die in Vancouver and 16 people have died in the
Toronto area."

Tessa Nicoll, a University of B.C. pharmacist, says ecstasy is a
potent drug that causes side-effects such as clenching of the jaws,
nausea, paranoia and a huge depletion of serotonin, a chemical in the
brain that controls mood.

"We know that people have died taking as little as two tablets, so the
safety index or margin is pretty small," Nicoll says.

"The dose that you take to get high and the dose you take to die is
not that much different."

But at this rave, "e" rules: capsules and pink pills with an imprint
of tulips, white ones with the Playboy bunny logo and XXX markings,
and plain green, beige and blue ones.

Chris, visiting from Seattle, says he downed "e" two hours earlier and
now feels a tingling sensation in his head and the back of his neck.

"I'm feeling happy and I'm really into the music," he says as he shows
a reporter five blue pills in plastic wrap stuffed into a clear tube.

Like other ravers, he's smuggled them in despite being frisked by
security at the door.

Chris says he gets the pills for $20 each in Canada, compared to $20
US in Seattle.

An eagle-eyed first-aid attendant catches a glimpse of Chris's stash
and hauls him into the first-aid room, with the teen pleading his innocence.

He's forced to hand over the drugs as three first-aid attendants start
lecturing him about the evils of ecstasy.

"When we find you foaming on the floor we have to treat you and go
home thinking about it," says one of them.

Minutes later, first-aid attendants carry a male teenager into the
room and close the door. They won't say what happened to him.