IN NEW DRUG BATTLE, USE OF ECSTASY AMONG YOUNG SOARS

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 -- Even as casual drug use has dropped nationwide, some
of the nation's most prominent drug experts warned today that the use of a
psychedelic drug known as Ecstasy has risen sharply, particularly among
young people, raising fears that a major new front has opened in the
government's efforts to curb illegal drugs. In the last 10 months alone,
agents for the Customs Service have seized a record 8 million doses of the
drug at the nation's airports and other ports of entry, far exceeding the
750,000 doses or tablets seized in 1998 and the 3.5 million confiscated
last year, according to the government.

But federal officials gathered at a conference here to discuss how to deal
with the drug acknowledge that the seizures represent only a fraction of
the total amount of Ecstasy that has been smuggled into the country and, in
turn, channeled into major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

Officials say the drug, which increases energy and is reputed to foster a
sense of well-being, has gained popularity among teenagers on the nightclub
circuit and at all-night dance parties known as raves.

The proliferation of the so-called club drug has been fueled by highly
organized drug traffickers who authorities say have begun to expand their
sales operations into the increasingly lucrative Ecstasy market, where a
single pill can be manufactured for as little as 50 cents and then sold for
as much as $40.

"What was once ad-hoc smuggling among small-time dealers and users has
mushroomed into organized trafficking among criminals," said Raymond W.
Kelly, the commissioner of the Customs Service. "They have the money and
the muscle to market Ecstasy beyond the club scene in New York, Miami and
Los Angeles. We now see it surfacing all over the country."

The seizures, along with evidence of the drug's increasing use, have
prompted such widespread concern that law enforcement officials and drug
policy experts from across the country have gathered this week in
Washington at a conference organized by the Drug Enforcement Administration
to discuss strategies on combating it.

The White House's drug policy director, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, today
warned that the drug was posing a particularly serious threat to children.
He cited a nationally recognized survey showing a sharp rise in the number
of high school seniors who said that they had used Ecstasy in the previous
month, from 1.5 percent in 1998 to 2.5 percent the following year.

"The use of Ecstasy has skyrocketed," he said.

For all the concerns raised, law enforcement officials at the conference
and elsewhere seemed at a loss over how to confront the problem. General
McCaffrey said today that his office would spend $5 million on a national
advertising campaign warning against the drug. But he offered no other
major initiatives specifically tailored to deal with the Ecstasy problem.

In what was described today as a victory in the government's war against
drug traffickers, Attorney General Janet Reno announced the arrest of 140
people who were accused of participating in a nationwide ring that supplied
clandestine methamphetamine laboratories with the basic ingredient needed
to make the drug. The arrests capped an eight-month investigation.

Ms. Reno, who made the announcement at the Ecstasy drug conference, said
that federal agents had seized 10 tons of pseudoephedrine, a compound found
in diet pills and nasal decongestants, but which bootleggers use to make
methamphetamines, a stimulant nicknamed meth, crank, ice and speed.

Ecstasy is a bitter white powder that is also known as MDMA, short for
methylenedioxy methamphetamine. It is a chemical variation of mescaline, a
hallucinogenic drug obtained from the mescal plant, and amphetamine, or
speed, a drug that stimulates the central nervous system.

It enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the early 1970's as a substitute
for methylenedioxy amphetamine, or MDA, which was outlawed in the late
1960's. But it was not until the early to mid-1980's that Ecstasy gained a
regular following in both Europe and the United States on the nightclub and
party scene.

In recent years, the drug's popularity has grown at a rate that has alarmed
authorities in the United States, though it is difficult to say exactly how
many people are experimenting with the drug. It has become one of the
illicit drugs that law enforcement officials consider the most troubling
because of their widespread use.

Many users of Ecstasy are drawn by its ability to reduce inhibitions,
promote euphoria, produce light hallucinations and suppress the need to eat
or sleep. One pill's effects can last as much as six hours, but users build
up a tolerance, and an overdose can cause accelerated heartbeat, high blood
pressure, fainting, muscle cramps or panic attacks.

Many experts consider Ecstasy psychologically addictive and maintain that
it can cause paranoia and psychosis. It has been linked to a handful of
deaths nationwide in recent years, along with a spate of injuries. The
government reports that 1,042 people sought emergency-room help in 1998,
compared with 637 people a year earlier because they had abused the drug.

The drug is largely manufactured in laboratories in Belgium and the
Netherlands, where it is sold for as little as 50 cents, and then smuggled
into the United States. For the most part, Israeli organized-crime
syndicates have been implicated as the main source of the distribution of
the drugs in the United States, the authorities say.

But Lewis Rice Jr., the special agent who heads the drug agency's New York
division, said the potential for large profits has led other drug
organizations to enter into the Ecstasy trade.

"In the decade of the 1990's, we didn't see that much of this drug," he
said. "But traditional cocaine organizations are starting to look at
Ecstasy as the new drug to market and sell."