NOT EVERYONE SEES ECSTASY AS A DANGER

Drug's Advocates Call For A Look At Its Benefits

Amanda began using it last year and has since done it a half-dozen times.
The 20-year-old Boston University student knows it may leave permanent
brain damage, but the warm, fuzzy feeling she gets from it each time
outweighs any long-term potential ailment, she said. "There are other
things I could be doing that would be much worse for me," said Amanda, who
spoke on condition that her last name not be used. "I don't want to end up
a vegetable, but I haven't heard anything concrete that would stop me from
using it."

Much has been written over the past few years about the rise of ecstasy, a
mood-altering drug with seemingly contradictory effects - high energy, a
jolt in heart rate, gregarious behavior mixed with a peaceful, placidly
euphoric feeling that has earned it the moniker, "the hug drug."

Despite the many who consider ecstasy the next great epidemic to ravage the
nation's youth, some researchers echo Amanda's doubts and argue that the
jury is still out on whether the drug is really dangerous. Some go even
further: They believe the positive effects outweigh the negatives for many
people.

Rick Doblin, a graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who
founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a
nonprofit group that researches the pros and cons of drugs like ecstasy, is
among a dissident group who adamantly argues that scientists have found
insufficient evidence to justify any categorical ban of the drug. Over the
years, Doblin has become one of the leading proponents for the therapeutic
use of ecstasy, a chemical compound clinically called
methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, first patented in Germany in 1914
by the company Merck.

Ecstasy, the street name that stuck because of the drug's Prozac-plus
qualities, was initially conceived to reduce the barriers of resistant
mental patients. All but disappearing until a US Army study in 1953,
scientists found that the drug soothes and comforts users.

"We've done work with cancer patients that shows it helps people to deal
with their fears and that with rape victims it helps reduce post-traumatic
stress," Doblin said. "It helps people accept difficult emotions and it
helps us learn about self love, openness to others, and openness to
critical feedback. We shouldn't push this underground; we should study this
intensely."

While Doblin casts doubt on studies concluding that ecstasy induces memory
loss, scientists say repeated tests show the drug can kill important brain
cells and leave permanent damage to people who use it even modestly. The
studies show that the drug's negative effects come from the same
neorochemical reaction that creates pleasure. Ecstasy enters the
bloodstream like Prozac and similarly strikes at those brain cells that
release serotonin, a chemical that regulates mood. But the drug goes much
further than the now commonly used antidepressant. Ecstasy ends up flooding
certain parts of the brain with abnormal amounts of serotonin.

The problem, said George Ricaurte, a neurotoxicologist at Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine, is that too much serotonin in the brain has
risky side effects. One of them is that it "prunes" the branches of
serotinin-producing nerve cells, which he said causes permanent memory loss
and can lead to other problems. "Users of MDMA say it produces a
psychedelic effect," he said. "Whatever it is, people seem to like it. But
the damage has been shown conclusively, in my view. Still, I think the vast
majority of neuroscientists would agree that we don't fully appreciate the
consequences of it yet."

Law enforcement officials, however, aren't waiting for the final analysis.
When the drug resurfaced in the early 1980s, with advocates promoting it as
something similar to LSD without the hallucinatory effects or cocaine and
heroin's addictive properties, drug officials quickly banned it under their
discretionary powers as an illegal substance.

It took about 10 years before the drug started flowing to the United States
in large quantities. Some of the ecstasy is produced in the country, but
most of it arrives from abroad. Drug officials estimate as much as 80
percent of the drug is imported from the Netherlands and Belgium.

Once the drug of choice among a select group of club-going students in
major cities, ecstasy has taken taken off since the early 1990s and has
become popular with youths across the country.

In 2000, US Customs officers seized more of it than in any previous year.
Its use has doubled since 1995 among teenagers and one in 10 now say
they've tried it, according to surveys. In New England, antidrug agents no
longer consider ecstasy a harmless turn of fashion and they're pouring more
and more resources into fighting it. While other drugs such as marijuana,
cocaine, and heroin have leveled off in use over the past few years, use of
ecstasy is growing exponentially. During fiscal 2000, Customs officials
seized 9.3 million "e" tablets, far above the 3.5 million confiscated the
year before and the 750,000 pills seized in fiscal 1998.

In New England, the surging use of ecstasy is registering with police. The
number of cases the region's Drug Enforcement Administration office is
pursuing has jumped from none in 1997 to 43 in 2000 - and that doesn't
include the recent seizure of ecstasy tablets from the car of Patriots
cornerback Ty Law in Niagara Falls. "This is becoming a huge problem in New
England," said Diane Brackett, a spokeswoman for the DEA's New England
field division. "It's what's hot right now and for the past several years
with the high school-through-college age group. Many students just don't
believe it's as bad as coke and heroin. But it's psychologically addictive
and can cause a lot of harm."

Since it costs less than a dollar to produce and sells at about $25 a
"roll," or pill, ecstasy has found its way into high schools, colleges, and
nearly everywhere youths hang out in America.

Amanda is not an anomaly, especially among students only a few years
younger. According to a national study released in December by the
University of Mic higan, 51 percent of high school seniors surveyed this
year said it is "fairly easy" or "very easy" to buy ecstasy, up from 22
percent of a similar pool polled in 1989. In the Northeast, 9 percent of
all students surveyed in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades said they had
used the drug, 3 percent more than students in the South and Midwest but 5
percent less than students in the West.

"Young people have not yet come to see ecstasy as a very dangerous drug,"
said Lloyd D. Johnston, one of the research scientists who conducted the
Michigan study. "Until they do, it seems unlikely that we will see the
situation turn around."

Following the pattern of other profitable, illegal drugs, the small tablets
are now being smuggled into the United States in increasingly creative
ways. Last month, the Customs Service announced that a growing number of
air passengers this year have been caught sneaking ecstasy-filled tubes
inside their bodies. The agency seized thousands of such ingested tablets
in 2000.

"The use of 'swallowers' in ecstasy smuggling schemes is cause for serious
concern," said Raymond W. Kelly, the commissioner of the Customs Service.
"This technique has long been a hallmark of the heroin and cocaine trade,
sometimes with fatal consequences for the couriers."

As more and more youths across the country like Amanda see ecstasy as a
party drug whose effects wear off only a few hours later, the worst being
little more than a minor headache, the supply is sure to wend its way to
the growing demand. And the demand is unlikely to ebb until scientists more
decisively debunk the skeptics.

"Ecstasy is a feeling of happiness and it makes you feel good about
yourself and everyone around you," Amanda said. "Who wouldn't want to feel
that way?"