ECSTASY DRUG IMPORTS FLYING HIGH IN MIAMI

Ecstasy, the popular party drug, is being seized in huge amounts at Miami
International Airport. Since Oct. 1, the U.S. Customs Service reports, its
agents have found 497,135 tablets at the airport alone, outscoring their
total for the 12 previous months.

If that's good, it's also bad.

Although agents are understandably ecstatic about the seizures, they
shudder to think of how much Ecstasy eludes their scrutiny, their dogs and
their clutches.

Because it's impossible for law enforcement agencies to do much more than
sample the vast numbers of international passenger and cargo flight
arrivals, they reckon that the increasing size and frequency of seizures
reflects not only success, but also failure.

Some of the recent seizures are enormous. For example, a multiagency task
force reported taking 700,000 tablets in Fort Lauderdale last month from
three Hungarians who live in Broward County. Agents said the goods had been
flown here from Amsterdam in the Netherlands. On Wednesday last week, the
Drug Enforcement Administration arrested a Belgian who they said tried to
sell 150,000 tablets to undercover agents.

Those arrests mean that big loads got past Customs agents at the airport,
where Ecstasy has been keeping them busy.

"Demand in the U.S. is growing dramatically," said Zach Mann, spokesman for
Customs in Miami. "Since Oct. 1 this year, Customs nationwide has seized
1.9 million tablets -- almost two million in 2 1/2 months. In all of fiscal
year 2000, we seized 9.3 million. In '99, there were 3 1/2 million pills,
in '98 it was 750,000, and in '97 it was 400,000."

In less than three months of this fiscal year 2001, seizures at the Miami
airport not only surpass the nationwide total for all of 1997, they already
exceed MIA seizures for fiscal 2000 (305,924 pills) and 1999 (450,937).

Ecstasy comes in capsule and tablet form, but mainly as tablets. Many
colors are used, and they are stamped with logos like Mercedes and
Mitsubishi cars. Some have a happy face. Typically, though, Ecstasy appears
as a white pill, a little bigger than an aspirin tablet. Chemically, its
name is 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine -- MDMA for short.

The latest captured load arrived late at night Dec. 8, hidden in eight
cartons of powdered baby formula on a Martinair flight from Amsterdam to
Miami. Customs agents discovered it Dec. 10 in the airline's warehouse.
They counted a rounded-off 290,000 tablets.

INSIDERS SUSPECTED

They watched the cache for four days, hoping someone would come to take it.
If anyone had, more might now be known about who handles the Ecstasy that
slips by the system. Investigators are sure insiders move it out of the
airport -- people with legitimate jobs that give them access.

"It's all so new, I don't think any of us have a handle on who they are or
any of that," said Brent Eaton, DEA spokesman in Miami.

The drug's popularity surge is outrunning investigations, he said. Eaton
points to a report by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, whose 13th
annual survey reveals that 10 percent of teenagers have tried Ecstasy at
least once. A year ago, it was 7 percent, five years ago, 5 percent.
Marijuana use is in decline.

"When kids come home, the parents can smell pot on you," Eaton said. "They
can smell liquor on you. But a kid can be high as a kite on Ecstasy and
they won't know it. There's no smell to a pill."

Ecstasy is manufactured in Europe, in clandestine laboratories in the
region known as Benelux -- short for Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Eaton said the law over there has been cracking down.

"They've recently knocked off some big ones, but some of them are on barges
between the Netherlands and Belgium," he said. "When they smell the heat in
one country, they move the barge to the other. A lot of the business is
controlled by Eastern Europeans and Israelis."

Amsterdam is the primary airport of origin. The 700,000 pills seized in
Fort Lauderdale last month are believed to have come from there.

INDIVIDUAL CARRIERS

Cargo is not the only shipping method. Passengers also carry Ecstasy in
commercial quantities. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Customs arrested
three at the airport.

The first was a Dutch woman who flew here from Suriname with 20,735 tablets
of Ecstasy in her suitcase. Then they got a German man with 95,325 tablets
in his luggage.

Next they nailed a creatively attired Frenchman. He was wearing blue jeans
with sewn-in spandex shorts, the tights equipped with pockets. The pockets
contained packets of Ecstasy, shrink-wrapped and shaped to conform to the
contours of the fellow's thighs. His score: 10,679 pills.

Agents say the pills sell on the streets for as much as $30 a pop. At that
rate, the Frenchman was carrying $320,370 worth.

The pills on the Martinair plane would have brought $8.7 million at retail.

Ecstasy has no medicinal value, the DEA's Eaton said. It just makes users
feel good, but overdoses can be fatal.

"It was invented in 1912 by a German scientist as a weight-reduction
preparation," Eaton said.

"Then in the '60s it was being used by some psychotherapists because it
caused their patients to identify with them. It gives you that lovey-dovey
feeling, a comfort feeling. And then it was outlawed and became a Schedule
1 drug -- no legitimate use in the U.S."