'E' EXPLOSION CATCHES US OFF GUARD

Authorities in America are preparing to wage all-out war against smugglers
of Ecstasy amid growing evidence of a surge in the circulation of the
mood-enhancing drug across the US in big cities and small suburban towns
alike.

Long popular in Europe, the drug began to take hold in the US only a few
years ago and was initially limited mostly to the rave scene in New York,
Miami and Los Angeles. Officials now say the drug has become a commodity in
high schools and shopping malls in virtually every state.

The extent of the explosion was spelled out at a three-day conference on
Ecstasy in Washington last week. Customs and drugs enforcement officials
said that in the past seven months, 8 million pills were seized from
traffickers and dealers, more than 20 times the number confiscated for the
whole year in 1998.

"The use of Ecstasy has skyrocketed," confirmed Barry McCaffrey, the White
House drug policy director. He announced plans to spend $5m (UKP3m) on an
advertising campaign to warn young people against the potential long-term
effects that the drug, also called E, can have on the brains of regular
users.

Efforts are meanwhile being made to draw up draconian new laws, both at the
federal level and in state legislatures, to harden significantly the
penalties for those peddling the small pills. The Senate has draft
legislation before it named the Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act.

A synthetic drug, Ecstasy - or, to use its chemical name, 3-4
methylenedioxymethamphetamine - was not even declared illicit in the US
until 1985. By flooding the brain with naturally occurring serotonin, it
elicits feelings of immense well-being and sociability. Not associated with
either violent or moody behaviour, it is also called the "hug-drug".

There is an accumulating body of scientific research, however, confirming
that use of E can damage the brain. Immediate side-effects can include
over-heating and a rise in blood pressure. But it is widely seen by its
users as essentially benign and physically non-addictive.

The invasion of the drug has drugs and customs agents switching their
attention from Latin America to western Europe. An estimated 80 per cent of
the Ecstasy pills entering the US are manufactured in the Netherlands, while
the smuggling operations have mostly been traced to Israelis.

"It has changed our institutional mindset," Raymond Kelly, the Commissioner
of the Customs Service said at the conference. "We were kind of
southern-focused, and now we've had to extend our focus to Europe."

Several recent busts have dramatised the drug's new popularity in America
and the toughening attitude of the police and politicians. Ten days ago
police in Los Angeles seized more than 2 million tablets worth $40m.

In New Jersey, where a new law was enacted in early July making possession
and intent to distribute a first-degree crime, police arrested two
university students found with a stash of 49,000 Ecstasy pills in a storage
garage in the small town of Neptune.

What began as a criminal investigation has now also become a tragedy. Within
hours of being taken to a police cell, one of the pair, Kenneth Gregorio,
23, hanged himself using a drawstring from his trousers.