FEDS CRACK DOWN ON ECSTACY

NORTH BERGEN, N.J. -- In a suburban ballroom, music without melody
pounds from speakers piled almost to the ceiling.

At this nine-hour rave party, only the ribcage-rattling bass
matters.

About 2,000 teenagers, most wearing nylon UFO brand parachute pants,
writhe and hop on a packed dance floor. Alcohol is conspicuously
absent, but the drug Ecstasy is everywhere. The aspirin-size pill
provides the high of choice among these pencil-thin girls and
hyperactive boys. They say it heightens their sensitivity to the
vibrating bass, tickling the skin and sending chills up the spine.
''Everything feels good,'' says Tricia Kaz, 18, a freshman at Seton
Hall University in South Orange, N.J. She spent three weeks at a drug
rehabilitation center after her mother found out about her Ecstasy
habit, but she says she doesn't see the harm of a drug that produces
no hangover or physical craving.

Kaz and the other youths might be mistaken.

New studies show that users of Ecstasy risk the possibility of brain
damage from prolonged use. Law enforcement is intensifying its efforts
to stop the growing demand for Ecstasy and to halt organized crime's
penetration of the market. The pill, at $20 or so a pop, acts a little
like stimulants such as methamphetamine and a little like a
hallucinogen such as LSD. A hit produces a warm, fuzzy sense of
well-being and the manic energy to dance until dawn. However, studies
indicate that Ecstasy, the nickname for the drug compound 3,4
methylenedioxy-methamphetamine (MDMA), clicks off brain cells crucial
to memory and sleep.

''The party's over,'' says Alex Stalcup, a physician who runs a drug
treatment center in Concord, Calif. ''Ecstasy hurts the brain.

It is no longer a hypothesis. The drug is toxic.

It is no longer appropriate to consider it a recreational drug.''
Until recently, law enforcement had shrugged its shoulders.

Because Ecstasy users keep to themselves at dance parties, known as
raves, there was no violence or theft associated with drugs, as there
is with drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

The Ecstasy scene is becoming more dangerous as the lure of phenomenal
profits attracts organized crime.

The drug costs just pennies to make. The international crime agency
Interpol, the U.S. Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement
Administration have tracked Israeli crime groups and Russian mobsters
trading in Ecstasy. Last month, federal authorities arrested Sammy
''The Bull'' Gravano, a former mafia hitman, for allegedly running an
Ecstasy ring in Arizona that distributed 25,000 pills a week, worth
half a million dollars on the street.

Between Oct. 1, 1999, and Feb. 29, Customs agents confiscated 4
million tablets, 1 million more than in all of last year. Seizures of
Ecstasy, classified as a Schedule I drug, like LSD and heroin, are
expected to grow eightfold by the end of the year.

''It's truly a global business, and it has completely erased all the
old routes law enforcement had mapped out for the smuggling of
traditional drugs like heroin, cocaine and marijuana,'' says U.S.
Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly. Crime groups use computers to
track international mail shipments of the drug from the Netherlands
and Belgium through dummy addresses in Europe and into the United States.

While his agency and others step up policing efforts, Kelly emphasizes
that teenagers need to be warned about the drug's potential danger.
''It has the 'love-drug, hug-drug' label to it,'' Kelly says. ''Kids
and their parents don't realize it has long-term implications. It is a
killer, category one, dangerous drug.'' Inside the all-night rave
Raves began in the 1980s as informal groups gathered on farms or in
vacant buildings to listen to bass-heavy music, take Ecstasy and dance
all night. Now, an Internet search will turn up more than two dozen
raves in the USA on any weekend, many in legal venues that promise
safety, portable potties and laser light shows.

At the New Jersey party, a bouncer checked each ''raver'' for weapons
and drugs, but the tiny pills slipped by easily.

Ravers say they hide them in their shoes or take them beforehand.
Marijuana passed security, too. Teens rolled joints openly and the
odor of pot permeated the ''chill out'' room off the main dance floor,
where the ravers cool off after dancing. The crowd was middle class,
overwhelmingly white and unfailingly polite. Most were teenagers or in
their early 20s. They had paid $20, $15 with a flier, to get in. Many
said they don't take drugs but relish the atmosphere of acceptance at
raves that they do not find among the cliques at school. ''Drugs are
everywhere. They're in school,'' said Sunny Pae, 20, a history major
at New York University. ''It's all about the music, the love, the
vibe.'' Even those who shun the drugs admitted that an Ecstasy
undercurrent defines the party, the music and even the fashion.

The concession stand catered to Ecstasy users.

The drug causes involuntary jaw clenching and teeth grinding, and
nonstop dancing leads to dehydration. Ravers suck pacifiers to
unclench their jaws and lollipops to lubricate their mouths.

Two lollipops cost $1. A bottle of water or fruit juice costs
$3.

As the night wore on in North Bergen, teenagers huddled cross-legged
in clumps, knees and shoulders touching or bodies intertwined like
nesting hamsters. New acquaintances kissed for hours or massaged one
another's shoulders. ''Everything is so much better when you're on
drugs,'' said a 15-year-old high school freshman from Bayonne, N.J.,
who sucked madly on a pacifier strung around her neck. Her name is
being withheld because of her age. In a midriff-baring tank top and
nylon pants, this A-plus honor student danced wildly for hours, fueled
by three Ecstasy pills. ''Raving is not a crime,'' she said.
Possessing and taking Ecstasy are illegal, but the police rarely raid
these well-publicized raves.

In New Jersey, possession of Ecstasy carries a sentence of three to
five years in prison, but a first-time offender could serve less than
a year in county jail, says John Dangler, a Morris County, N.J.,
prosecutor, and ''that's if it is a truckload or a tablet.'' Police
know that Ecstasy and a handful of other drugs saturate these parties.
Raiding raves is an inefficient use of resources, police say. In
March, police raided a Toronto rave attended by 12,000 people but
confiscated just 300 Ecstasy tablets.

''Cops are still out there chasing major violent crimes like murder
and rapes and serious drug dealers,'' says James Pasco, executive
director of the Fraternal Order of Police. ''What would a cop rather
be doing, chasing a guy who just put a gun in a clerk's ear at the
store or arresting a kid who is using a drug that doesn't promote
violence?'' Police departments concentrate on street-corner drugs
because of their link to violence and crime, says Trinka Porrata, a
retired Los Angeles narcotics detective. Police, she says, are
conflicted about raiding raves. ''If you bust up a party, then you're
sending 800 kids on drugs on the road,'' Porrata says. ''At a real
rave, they go there, they do their drugs, they pass out, they sleep it
off and then they go home.'' Dangers of Ecstasy Yet the urgency to get
the drugs out of reach of teenagers has intensified as new scientific
studies warn that Ecstasy causes brain damage. Stalcup, the drug
addiction doctor who describes himself as a ''prototypical aging
hippie'' and has tried Ecstasy, often spends Saturday nights at San
Francisco-area raves, where he treats overheated and dehydrated
teenagers. He understands the allure.

''Ecstasy really is quite grand,'' Stalcup says. ''You feel warm and
close to people.

You want to hug people.

You feel ecstatic and full of human kindness.'' Still, he
worries.

Scientists have studied images of the brain before and after Ecstasy.
Stalcup describes the differences as ''graphic and gruesome.'' Ecstasy
kills off part of the nerve in the brain that releases serotonin, the
chemical that controls sleep, sexual function, memory, appetite and
mood, says Wilkie Wilson, a neuropharmacologist at Duke University who
co-wrote Buzzed, a guide to abused drugs.

A study by Johns Hopkins University researcher George Ricaurte in
Baltimore compared the brain scans of 14 Ecstasy users to non-users'
scans and found nerve damage that persists for at least seven years.

Teens have more serotonin-producers than they need, Wilson says, but
some of those nerves are lost with aging. ''Ecstasy users probably
don't realize this, but they are aging themselves prematurely,'' he
says. ''I expect them to have clinical depression and sleep disorders
down the road. It impairs learning, which is a particularly bad thing
for teenagers.'' The National Institute for Drug Abuse has placed
350,000 postcards with warnings in racks at clubs and record stores
and will spend $54 million on Ecstasy research this year -- 40% more
than in 1999. ''We're not yet at epidemic proportions, but we are
seeing an increase of Ecstasy and other club drugs in every major city
and among high school kids,'' NIDA director Alan Leshner says. ''We're
trying to use science to get in the way of a potential public health
plague.'' A few skeptics say that public health officials are
exaggerating the long-term risks of Ecstasy use or base their warnings
on incomplete scientific research.

So far, the naysayers lack counterevidence. But there are three U.S.
studies under way to determine whether the drug has any legitimate
therapeutic use. The studies also are measuring health risks. Chemists
created MDMA, or Ecstasy, in 1912 as an appetite suppressant, but it
never became popular.

In the 1970s, psychiatrists tried MDMA to eliminate inhibitions in
psychotherapy, and many doctors found its effectiveness limited. In
1986, the government classified it -- over the objections of some
psychiatrists who supported its use in therapy -- as a Schedule One
illicit drug with no medical benefit.

A federal conviction for possession of 2,800 grams, about 940 tablets,
would bring a maximum of five years in prison. About 90% of Ecstasy
comes from northern Europe, primarily the Netherlands and Belgium,
where labs can produce a pill for less than a dime, the DEA says.
Israeli crime groups, which mark up the wholesale price to about $4 a
tablet, dominate distribution, the agents say. Last year, Dutch and
Israel authorities seized more than 1 million tablets and arrested 49
people in the Netherlands, Israel and elsewhere.

The pills fit easily in suitcases and carry-on bags. One courier
stuffed a Winnie-the-Pooh doll full of tablets and carried it onto an
airplane. Another dealer filled his child's electronic toy with the
drugs to pass the Customs Service inspectors.

Traffickers take advantage of relaxed European Union borders, shipping
their drugs from Paris or Berlin instead of the heavily scrutinized
routes from Amsterdam or Brussels. Concerned with the rapid expansion
of Ecstasy trade, Interpol, the international police organization
based in France, created a department devoted to tracking Ecstasy.
''It's complicated because there is not just one group with one modus
operandi,'' says Hezi Leder, police attache for the Israeli embassy in
Washington. Israeli authorities participate frequently in stings with
U.S. and European authorities. Customs trained 13 dogs last month to
sniff out Ecstasy. The agency also has formed an Ecstasy task force
that catalogues smuggling methods and coordinates searches.

The DEA is hosting its first Ecstasy conference in July in Washington.
More than 200 international, federal, state and local law enforcement
officials are expected to attend.

Even as law enforcement tightens its grip on the international Ecstasy
trade, U.S. entrepreneurs have begun to produce a version of the drug.
Using Ecstasy recipes that don't rely on regulated chemicals, amateur
chemists concoct the drugs at secret labs.

In March, Texas State Police Lt. Patrick O'Burke and his officers shut
down an Ecstasy lab on an 80-acre ranch near San Antonio, where they
found enough chemicals to produce 750,000 capsules with a street value
of $15 million. ''This was big business,'' O'Burke said. ''This was an
organized criminal effort, very, very large scale.'' Retired Los
Angeles detective Porrata predicts the problems with Ecstasy will
begin to draw in local enforcement. When some California teens coming
from a rave died after driving over a cliff, public pressure built to
crack down, she says. ''Since then, law enforcement has been going,
'Oh, my God.' The raves are everywhere now, and we're starting to see
accidents and overdoses and kids dying from dehydration,'' she says.
''Local police and the public are just waking up to it.''