THEY POP `E' WITH EASE, BUT WHAT'S IN THE PILL?

Ecstasy is a dangerous drug, English comedian Lenny Henry once
quipped, because it makes white men think they can dance.

It's true: regular ecstasy users are almost always devotees of the
"rave" dance culture. There's no break between the techno songs, and
no applause - just the insistent beat that accentuates the effect of
the drug.

The people who go are mostly young, but old enough to hold career jobs
without kids and mortgages to cramp their style - or their spending.
This time they've gathered for a dance party on a Saturday night in a
warehouse in Fitzroy but it could as easily be in St Kilda, Prahran,
Footscray or Richmond.

It could even be underground - one dance party last year attracted a
few hundred people to a drain under Yarra Bend known as "the chamber".

Although most are in their 20s, there are a couple of older faces in
this crowd. One woman in her late 50s has been a regular on the dance
party scene since the late 1980s, and has been known to behave
violently, perhaps as a result of years of drug use.

Entrance is $15 - to cover the cost of the DJs and hired portaloos,
and invitations have been spread by word of mouth. There's a feeling
that this party is more hardcore, more real, than the "mega dance"
events that attract 12,000 people at $80 a head near the wharves. It
gives an impression of being where those in the know hang out.

Not that it's disorganised - it's far too profitable for that. The
party has a licence to sell alcohol until 3am - after that it swings
to pre-bought drinks cards to circumvent licensing laws. Not much
liquor is sold anyway. The bar sells far more water. Not everybody is
here to take drugs, but there are plenty around - especially ecstasy.

Ecstasy use now is like marijuana in the 1960s in that an entire
generation assumes only fuddy duddies and the moral right object to
it. Most assume that anyone who opposes ecstasy doesn't know what
they're talking about. Only a rash of deaths or dramatic proof of
long-term, side effects could alter the view of it as a "good time"
drug.

One sign of ecstasy's widespread acceptance is that the dealers are so
brazen. In this crowd, the dominant dealer is a man with the pudgy,
pale muscles of a faded body builder.

He's been selling ecstasy for at least 10 years, and is a regular at
Melbourne's dance parties. He began by selling steroids to gym mates,
but found trade in recreational drugs was better.

A pill is $50, or $40 if you know the dealer or buy in bulk. Regular
users rely on a favorite dealer, hoping it will insure them against
getting pills cut with other substances.

Most people stand around until midnight or 1am, waiting for the drugs
to take effect. Then they dance. There's no feeling of shame here, no
hint that the takers are part of a bigger problem. The lawyers, the
accountants, the well-to-do children of middle-class parents are
popping "e's" with ease, confident they'll come to no harm. On the
streets and in clubs, ecstasy doesn't have the stigma of heroin or
"speed." Which is ironic. Because, there's every risk these pills are
adulterated with heroin or "speed", or worse.DETECTIVES raiding a
two-storey flat in a north-western suburb last year made an unexpected
find.

Their target was a crew of known gunmen, and they were looking for
stolen goods. But they found a curious apparatus set up in an upstairs
bedroom.

Neighbors had been curious about the people moving into the flat not
long before the raid. It had taken several strong-looking men much
effort to install what appeared to be an oversize washing machine or
dryer. Two metres high and a metre wide, it was wheeled on a trolley.

The machine was lugged to an upstairs room, then the window blacked
out. The machine seemed to be working day and night, judging from the
rhythmic clunking. Police identified it as a pill-pressing machine - a
cumbersome, old-fashioned model that was obviously still in good
working order. (Another machine had been recently found in a routine
raid on a criminal's house in the eastern suburbs.)

Beside the machine were large amounts of powdered drugs, some in
plastic buckets, more heaped loose on pieces of newspaper. They were
mixed and dyed into the colors of popular ecstasy "brands": pink,
white, brown and blue.

The machine produced 65 pills a minute, a fraction of the speed of a
modern machine. But at 3900 pills an hour with a street price of $50 a
pill, it could stamp out drugs worth $195,000 in an hour.

Nearby, already packaged for sale, the detectives found 30,000 pills -
$1.5million worth on the street.

But when laboratory tests were conducted on the powder it revealed
varying mixtures containing caffeine, amphetamine, ephedrine, and a
horse anaesthetic called ketamine.

Such huge profits ensure that lack of the "correct" ecstasy
ingredients will never stop unscrupulous criminals from using almost
anything else to exploit the lucrative market.

Tests on so-called "ecstasy" tablets found in Melbourne and elsewhere
have revealed batches that differ wildly from each other and the
"correct" ingredient, the drug known as MDMA. Batch colors and cute
"brand" symbols are easily created and duplicated, disguising the fact
that the base powder could be cut with heroin, amphetamines,
prescription drugs, poisonous substances or a cocktail of the lot.

Consuming the result is like ordering a vodka knowing there is a risk
of being served methylated spirits.

Despite that fact, growing numbers of users trust the goodwill of
criminals who make pills in back yards. The users' only safeguard is
to rely on word-of-mouth reports about the side-effects of various
batches hitting the underground market.

Hundreds of people were queuing to get into a warehouse party at the
Global Village in Footscray early last year. Most were dressed in
loose-fitting, comfortable clothes that would absorb the sweat from
hours of dancing. Some wore reflective gear to bounce off the light
show.

But one man looked different. About 23, slight and small, he was
dressed in designer clothes and wore an expensive leather jacket.

For him, the night was business, not pleasure. He had hundreds of
clients, could make thousands of dollars and would not have to move.
They would come to him. All he had to do was walk the five metres past
security into the venue.

But, this time, he had a small problem. One of the women organising
the event recognised him as a drug dealer and told security to bar
him. The dealer didn't complain or get angry. He motioned to one of
the crowd controllers to move to the side for a quiet chat. "He just
said it would be worth my while to let him in," the security man
recalled later.

The dealer had opened his jacket and removed a wad of $100 notes
wrapped in a rubber band ("There would have been six grand there") and
offered it to the guard to step aside. When he was refused he just
shrugged and walked off. He knew there would be more parties.

At venues where almost everyone dances, the dealers don't. They use
women to carry the cash, hiding it in their underwear. And they have
male runners who carry small amounts of drugs, around 50 pills. The
main dealer will carry between 500 and 1000 pills and can be restocked
with a mobile phone call.

The dealer has his own security - usually three men. If crowd
controllers move towards the dealer, his own security will physically
jump on the security men, or, as happened in one nightclub, fake a fit
so they have to offer first aid while the drug dealer slips away.

Police are wary of mounting raids on nightclubs after being "burned"
by the Tasty Nightclub fiasco in 1994. In August that year, 40 police
raided the city club and strip searched 463 patrons. A total of 240
aggrieved people took legal action and it is believed to have cost the
police force $8 million to settle the cases. In effect, police no
longer check nightclubs for drug users.