ECSTASY FINDS AN EAGER MARKET

Illegal pills spread beyond party scene, find niche in suburbs

WASHINGTON - Authorities and drug abuse counselors are witnessing a sudden
and dangerous spike in the use of Ecstasy, a drug once confined to
nightclubs that is creeping into suburban neighborhoods.

>From Maryland to California, officials are seizing increasing amounts of
Ecstasy, a mix of stimulant and hallucinogen that is taken as a pill. Drug
use surveys also show a rise in Ecstasy use by teens.

"The increase has been tremendous," said Joe Keefe, the special agent in
charge of the Special Operations Division of the Drug Enforcement
Administration. "It is more available and more popular."

That concerns public health officials. Ecstasy causes heart rates to
skyrocket and body temperatures to soar, leading to dehydration and, in some
cases, death, experts said. They also worry that Ecstasy causes memory loss,
depression, anxiety and learning difficulties - long after the last pill is
taken.

"This is not a glorious substance," said Alan I. Leshner, director of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Ecstasy damages the brain, and that
damage is associated with mood changes and memory problems. It destroys
brain cells."

Just a few years ago, most authorities said they barely heard whispers about
Ecstasy, known officially as MDMA. But that has changed as the "designer"
drug, once taken mostly at nightclubs and large parties, has become
relatively popular.

Since October, U.S. Customs officials have seized 8 million pills - 4.5
million more than during the previous 12 months. A year earlier, they seized
750,000 pills.

Local authorities are making similar, if smaller, busts.

"It is all over the place," said Sgt. Jeff Price of the Anne Arundel County
(http://www.co.anne-arundel.md.us) police, which has seized 1,643 pills
since January. The department confiscated 280 pills last year.

"This is definitely the pill of the future," he said.

National drug abuse studies show similar increases through last year.

Last year, 8 percent of 12th-graders said they had tried the drug, up from
5.8 percent in 1998, a 38 percent increase, according a survey by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.

In Maryland, surveys of health experts, police and Ecstasy users show that
the drug has "spread beyond the party scene" in 15 counties, said Erin
Artigiani, coordinator of the Maryland Drug Early Warning System, which is
affiliated with the University of Maryland. "We're hearing a lot more about
it."

Those surveys so alarm Maryland officials that they plan to launch a public
relations campaign next month aimed at potential users and their parents.
The campaign will also try to educate police and health officials who deal
with Ecstasy users and dealers, officials said.

For years, Ecstasy has been popular among those who attend nightclubs and
large parties known as "raves," where teen-agers and young adults dance late
into the night to pounding music. Ecstasy makes the body sensitive to touch,
and users reportedly enjoy feeling sound vibrations from the loud music.

But federal and local authorities said they cannot explain why Ecstasy has
taken hold of suburban teen-agers who are not partygoers, though they have
several theories.

Organized crime has in recent years entered the Ecstasy trade, streamlining
smuggling and allowing dealers to meet growing demand, officials said. The
steady supply of Ecstasy has made it much easier for the drug to move beyond
the club scene, officials said.

Ecstasy also doesn't have the social stigmas of other drugs. You don't have
to inject it, like heroin, or sniff it, like powder cocaine. To take
Ecstasy, you just pop a pill.

Another reason: The drug helps users feel accepted, drug counselors said.

"It's that warm, comforting, accepting feeling that users get from it," said
Michael Gimbel, director of Baltimore County Bureau of Substance Abuse.
"It's very seductive. Most kids feel alienated from one another. When kids
use Ecstasy they feel like everybody loves them."

Most Ecstasy users are suburban teen-agers and young adults who buy the drug
from friends or new dealers who sell only that drug, counselors and police
said.

Other users in the Baltimore suburban counties simply drive into the city to
buy Ecstasy. The DEA recently conducted a study for Baltimore police about
the city's drug woes and said Ecstasy has a growing presence in southeast
neighborhoods.

Though DEA officials said they would start targeting Ecstasy dealers in the
city, Mayor Martin O'Malley has said that focusing on Baltimore's heroin
problem and related violence are more important.

Baltimore has 60,000 drug addicts, mostly hooked on heroin and cocaine, and
80 percent of city homicides are related to the city's drug trade, officials
said. Ecstasy makes up less than 1 percent of all city drug cases, city
police said.

But it's a different story in the suburbs, where Ecstasy seems to have found
an eager market, according to drug specialists and officials.

In Howard County (http://www.co.ho.md.us) , police seized 1,900 pills so far
this year - up from about 200 last year. Last month, Howard County police
arrested two Ellicott City men on charges they tried to buy several hundred
Ecstasy pills from an undercover detective.

In March, detectives arrested a Columbia man accused of distributing
thousands of Ecstasy pills, and police are looking into other possible
smuggling rings, said Sgt. Mark Joyce of the Howard County police narcotics
unit.

"It's really exploding here," Joyce said. "Wherever we turn, Ecstasy seems
to come up."

Baltimore County police have noticed a similar trend. They have seized 3,280
pills this year - up from 425 last year and five in 1998.

"A dangerous substance like this is a concern," said Bill Toohey, Baltimore
County police spokesman. "We are taking a hard look at it, learning how it
is distributed and sold."

Though federal officials have no idea how much Ecstasy is moving into the
United States, they said recent raids and busts give clear indications that
more of it is coming here.

Last month, the U.S. Customs Service seized 2.1 million Ecstasy pills in a
single raid on a plane at Los Angeles International Airport.

And, U.S. Customs officials announced in June that they arrested 25 people
linked to an international smuggling organization that officials said was
responsible for transporting 9 million Ecstasy pills.

"Every other week it seems like another organization is being taken down,"
said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs Service. "More volume is
coming in."

Ecstasy is a synthetic compound that is relatively difficult to make, which
has kept inexperienced users and dealers from creating it and has limited
production, officials said.

In the 1980s, American drug dealers easily supplied Ecstasy to the
relatively small club and party scene, authorities said.

But in the late 1990s, they couldn't keep up with demand and were forced to
tap supply lines from Europe, where the drug has been popular for the past
decade. Europe now supplies about 80 percent of U.S. Ecstasy, officials
said.

It costs about 50 cents to make a pill, which can cost $20 to $25 on the
street, authorities said. In some areas, Ecstasy fetches $40 a pill.

"There are a lot of different groups involved in this," Boyd said. "This is
a very profitable drug to smuggle."

Some critics say the Ecstasy increase is overblown. While acknowledging that
Ecstasy seems to be rising in popularity, they point to statistics that show
49 percent of 12th-graders nationally have tried marijuana and 62 percent
reported being drunk during their lifetimes. Almost 10 percent of
12th-graders nationally reported having used cocaine.

The critics also said police often promote drug "crises" centering on
suburban youth to garner headlines.

"I do feel this reflects the tendency of people in the drug-fighting
community to sound alarms to get attention," said Michael Massing, author of
"The Fix," a book that examined 40-years of American drug policy. "It's a
good way to keep the money flowing through the tap."