NO TELLING IF BUST HAD ANY IMPACT

Authorities don't know if less ecstasy on streets.

Close to three years ago, state and local authorities shut down one
of the largest ecstasy rings on the East Coast, but gauging the
bust's impact on the local drug trade since then has proven difficult.

Coming across ecstasy during a drug bust is routine for police, but
it is found far less frequently than street drugs cocaine and heroin.
So law enforcement officials cannot say for sure whether the biggest
ecstasy bust in the history of Northampton County has put a dent in
the dealing of the sometimes-deadly designer drug.

"I don't think you could say one way or the other," Warren County
Prosecutor Thomas S. Ferguson said. "I think it's out there and it's
on the radar screen. I don't think we've seen it increase or
decrease. I don't think there's any statistical difference since that time."

State and local authorities made the bust in September 2003 and
arrested six men in connection with the ring. At the helm was
55-year-old Duane Policelli, who built an elaborate and sophisticated
underground laboratory on his secluded property in Upper Mount Bethel Township.

Investigators said the manufacturing lab was one of the largest in
the nation and produced nearly a million ecstasy tablets over a
two-year period. The tablets were then sold for $20 to $40 from
Pennsylvania to Florida. Today, an ecstasy tablet generally sells in
the region for $25 a tablet, or $1,100 to $1,300 for a 100-tablet
lot, called a "roll," said Pennsylvania State Police Sgt. Carl Veach.

"Generally, the drug is available," said Veach, supervisor of the
criminal investigation section at the Bethlehem barracks. "Right now
we encounter it less frequently than cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines."

Chief Detective Joseph Stauffer of the Lehigh County Drug Task Force
said law enforcement has no way of knowing whether the bust dealt a
serious blow to the availability of ecstasy in the region.

"I would hope that it impacted on it, but ecstasy is still,
unfortunately, available in the community," Stauffer said. "I haven't
noticed an increase (in ecstasy arrests), but I haven't noticed a
significant decrease either. We wouldn't know how much ecstasy would
be available had those arrests not taken place."

Part of what makes it more difficult to track the movement of ecstasy
is the difference in cultures. Stauffer said when a big-time cocaine
and heroin dealer gets arrested, there's a struggle to fill the power
vacuum, but that's not necessarily the case with ecstasy.

"There's a different market for ecstasy than for cocaine and heroin,"
Stauffer said. "There's a different culture involved with the people
who use ecstasy and use street drugs."

Veach said police do not suspect there are any other large-scale drug
labs operating in the area.

"There's no big ring like what unfolded (a few years ago) that we are
aware of or are currently investigating," he said.

Policelli and Gregory Prendes, 48, are serving state prison
sentences. Three other men -- Geno Catanzariti, Michael Pacifico, a
former Bangor dentist, and William Hartranft -- finished their
sentences in county prison. A fifth man, Ervin Fetherman, was given
probation for selling the drug to dancers at his strip club, Erv's BYOB.

James P. McCarthy of Upper Mount Bethel Township perhaps paid the
steepest price. He committed suicide in June 2004, the same day he
was scheduled to plead guilty to his role in the drug ring. A
longtime acquaintance of McCarthy's said anxiety over going to prison
led him to suicide.