LOVE IS THE DRUG, AND IT'S FAR FROM CHEAP

Joe is a dealer in ecstasy and he has never had it so easy.

In this summer of millennium euphoria, Joe is moving up to 10,000 ecstasy
tablets a week, or so he tells friends, who have no reason to doubt it.

Depending on the deal, he buys wholesale at $15-$20 a tablet and sells in
small batches at $30-$50 a tablet. On these figures, he is making at least
$150,000 a week.

The police have Joe in mind. He is their archetypal ecstasy dealer. But not
for him the warm feelings and coziness ofthe "hug drug". He lives in a
tougher world where misconceptions are dangerous. His drugs of choice are
the big hits, amphetamines and cocaine. Joe likes a blast.

A lot of people buy from Joe in batches of 100 and onsell to their own tight
circle. They buy at $30, sell for $50 - a comfortable profit of $2,000.

Then there are the cottage industry dealers who sell to friends at home,
take a few extra out at night, or do drop-offs at private parties. They do
it for a while, make a bit of money and get their party drugs for free.

Eve and Roger are in their 30s and shifted 250 tablets in one week in the
lead-up to New Year's Eve. The wholesale price rose from $25 to $31 for 100
as the big night loomed.

They're nice people, maybe a little lost, but nothing feral about them,
nothing violent. On the contrary. Nonetheless, they're drug dealers.

And there are the brittle, tough temptresses. "When you're looking for big
dealers, you look for pretty girls - small, innocent petite girls who are
19, coked to the eyeballs," says the manager of one inner-city nightclub.

They've never been busier. Ecstasy has never been more plentiful or easier
to obtain.

As a designer drug, fashions change. At the moment, CK Gold, Road Runner,
Blue Turtles, Olympic and Mitsubishis are the rage, costing from $35 to $60,
depending on who you know.

"They always stock up for for Christmas and the new year," says Detective
Inspector Paul Willingham, investigation co-ordinator with the crime
agencies unit that busted three illicit ecstasy-manufacturing laboratories
in Sydney last year.

It's party time, and Sydney is partying bigger than ever. Despite huge
attendances at New Year's Eve functions, usually producing a lot of drunken
violence and anti-social behaviour, police and ambulance officers were
astounded - and gratified - by the good-natured celebrants.

The reason, they suspect, was a lot had abandoned booze for ecstasy, also
known as eccy, XTC, Adam, the yuppie drug and its chemical name, MDMA. They
were euphoric, experiencing feelings ofempathy, intimacy, their senses
heightened by chemicals.

They wanted to dance, not brawl, and each weekend in Sydney a growing number
of mostly young adults is joining in. Police estimate attendances at dance
parties in the city at about 15,000 on Friday and Saturday nights, with more
in the suburbs.

The big scenes are the nightclubs and dens in Oxford Street, Kings Cross and
the city.

Managements say they ban trafficking and drug use on their premises but
can't control what happens outside. They say that despite scrutiny by
security guards, on big nights drug use is "so rampant there's nothing more
you can do - the dance floor's packed - Es can be hidden in underwear".

Police aren't confident about security at some clubs. Inspector Willingham,
ofthe Chemical Diversion and Clandestine Laboratory team, says an ecstasy
dealer's "turf" is seldom the street but more often a club, where he and his
friends "have the rights".

"The problem is a compliant crowd. They want to be able to buy the drug and
take it without feeling threatened. They're out to have fun, not problems.
We know that in some cases the security guards are involved."

Most of the ecstasy they buy is manufactured in the Netherlands and Britain,
which have illegal laboratories that, Inspector Willingham said, match
Australian pharmaceutical manufacturers in size and expertise.

As a result, the product is of a higher quality than ecstasy made in
Australia, where clandestine laboratories have difficulty getting the raw
materials, are smaller and under pressure from police.

Australian importers buy at $5 a tablet in the Netherlands. The minimum
wholesale price here is $15, but despite the immense profits, police say no
group has yet moved to control the market.

Instead, there are many small importers. Inspector Willingham says an
average importation would be about 5,000 tablets. As a consequence, there
are many dealers and, unlike heroin and cocaine, they are not primarily
ethnically based. Many, if not most, are dinki-dis.

The market for any drug is hard to estimate, particularly with the less
structured markets for ecstasy and amphetamines. Based on estimates by the
Bureau of Criminal Intelligence, Australians spend somewhere between $1.3
billion and $2 billion a year on ecstasy, half of their expenditure on
amphetamines.

Euphoria is a growing business.