ECSTASY DEATH RATE HIGHEST IN WORLD, TORONTO COURT TOLD

Airline Worker Gets 4-Year Prison Term For Importing Drug

A judge has sentenced a former Canada 3000 airline purser to four
years in prison for conspiring to import 9,600 ecstasy tablets after
the court was told Toronto has the highest ecstasy-related death rate
of any city in the world.

Rudolph Rip, 39, of Toronto, had already been fired from his job
after being charged with trying to bring the drug into Canada on a
flight from Amsterdam to Halifax last year.

"The consequences of what you did are really horrendous," said Madame
Justice Lauren Marshall of Ontario Court of Justice.

It is the first sentencing in a major ecstasy importing case in
Ontario and is likely to set a precedent, federal crown attorney
Peter Thorning said in an interview.

Toronto police Detective Randy Smith said in an interview that the
four-year sentence is "very significant," considering that Rip
pleaded guilty.

Although Rip was arrested in Halifax, both the conspiracy and the
RCMP investigation were centred in Toronto, where the pills were
ultimately headed for sale, Thorning said.

Known as MDMA, ecstasy is an illegal amphetamine-based drug that
causes euphoric and mildly hallucinatory effects.

"Toronto now has the largest death rate due to ecstasy of any city in
the world," Stephen Kish, a University of Toronto associate professor
and a pharmacologist who has studied autopsies of ecstasy victims for
the United States government.

Kish attributed the deaths to a "very high rate" of ecstasy use in the city.

Ontario's ecstasy-related deaths have risen from zero in 1997 to nine
last year, testified Dr. Bonita Porter, deputy chief coroner of
Ontario.

There are six confirmed and three likely related deaths this year,
she said in an interview.

In a statement to the judge, Rip said that he didn't intend to break
the law, but became an ecstasy user to grow in spiritual
understanding and to "see the common bond and energy that exists for
all of us."

At the time he tried to import it, he didn't think the drug was dangerous.

"I now realize that there are serious risks," Rip said. "There is a
need to educate the public."

But Thorning, in asking for a six-year sentence, said Rip was working
on a deliberately planned, profit-making venture. Each pill could
sell for $10 to $40, he said. "He wore his Canada 3000 uniform like a
shell. They trusted him and he breached that trust."

Defence lawyer Robert Christie said Rip had no previous record and
was a low risk to reoffend.