THE ECSTASY EXPLOSION

Pay 25 bucks for a tiny pill emblazoned with a lightning bolt, butterfly or
four-leaf clover.

Wash it down with a liter of water, then sit back and wait for the magic to
happen.

Within an hour, a feeling of euphoria starts spreading through your limbs
and scalp and fingertips. You feel a previously unknown dose of esteem that
cues you to talk to strangers about the brand new wonderful thoughts
colliding in your head.

Someone offers to brush your hair; you let them, and it's about the most
sensual thing you've ever felt.

You can dance all night, expressing your bliss by flailing your arms and
writhing to the driving beat of a non-stop techno tune.

You become best friends with people whose names you don't bother to learn.

You become part of a train of people who are massaging each other's
shoulders, partly because it feels good to you and partly because you want
to do something gratifying for someone else.

You want to be nice.

All of this glory came from that little pill, that golden dose of ecstasy.

And if repeated use of it doesn't cause you to suffer a fatal heat stroke,
brain damage, discard your ambition like a dirty shirt or get you shipped
off to prison for possessing a controlled substance, you'll probably be
fine. Not.

A YOUNG PERSON'S DRUG

It's not like crack cocaine. Stephen Smith, commander of the
Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team, says the drug ecstasy doesn't
enrage users, and he's not heard any horror tales of people pawning their
mothers' televisions to feed their habit.

Even though users sometimes suffer dehydration, there have been few
fatalities associated with the drug.

So why is this substance -- sometimes called the "hug drug" because of the
profoundly positive, empathetic feelings it induces -- considered a problem?

"It's a controlled substance, and it's my job to get it off the street," CNT
Agent Gerry Spears said. "The government says it is illegal, and that's
enough for me.

"Kids who wouldn't try other drugs are trying ecstasy. And once they do
that, they go onto other things. The ecstasy has them feeling good, and
someone will tell them, 'Now, you need to take this' -- LSD or GHB or
ketamine -- 'so you can keep your high going.' They go from one drug to
another to keep the roll going.

"It can keep them up all weekend long, with no food or sleep or anything to
drink. They can take it and just keep going, dancing. But the body
temperature can skyrocket and you dehydrate. That can cause heart failure or
stroke."

Ecstasy is 3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), a psychoactive drug
possessing stimulant and hallucinogenic properties. MDMA was first
synthesized in 1912 by a German company to be used as an appetite
suppressant.

In the late 1970s, MDMA was used to facilitate psychotherapy by a small
group of therapists in the United States. Illicit use of the drug did not
become popular until the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it is rarely
consumed with alcohol, as alcohol is believed to diminish its effects.

It is commonly associated with all-night dance parties called raves, and at
concerts and nightclubs.

Pure MDMA is manufactured by chemists in Amsterdam, Brussels, Germany and
Mexico and then imported into the United States.

"If it was made in the U.S., it's counterfeit, and it might be cut with LSD,
meth or ketamine," Spears said. "Then it is put into a pill press. It's
about the size of an aspirin, and the makers put a design on it, like a
crown or some sort of emblem.

"It's marketing. It's fashion."

Ecstasy has been available in Savannah for only a year or so, and law
enforcement has yet to make a detectable inroad on that scene.

"It's hard to work into it," Spears said. "It's not as easy to get in that
network as the powder cocaine or marijuana scene because it is new.

"It's a brand new dealer who is selling it. You have to get new angles. I'm
not going to sit here and tell you how we're trying to do it, but I will say
it's difficult.

"It's a tight-lipped group who are involved with ecstasy."

There have been arrests. In Chatham County, three people were charged with
ecstasy-related crimes this year, three were charged in 1998, and three were
charged in years prior to that.

So far, only two people have been sentenced for those crimes. According to
Counter Narcotics Team information, one man was sentenced to a year in jail
and four years probation, while a woman was sentenced to 18 months in prison
and eight years probation.

"So far, the arrests have been sporadic," Smith said. "What drives our unit
mostly is the open-air, visible drug distribution that makes the citizen
feel less safe, like street corner distributions that have spawned violence.
Those are our priority.

"The most popular illegal drug in Chatham County is marijuana, without
question. Second most is crack. Third is powder cocaine.

"And then there's ecstasy, and it has its own group of supporters. We've had
some training recently to show our agents what it looks like and how to get
into that network. Ecstasy is very easy to overlook if it's in an aspirin
bottle.

"I've got a couple of agents that have made contact with people who are
inclined to use designer drugs like ecstasy. But most of my people wouldn't
be readily accepted into that crowd."

Ecstasy is considered a young person's drug, with most activity taking place
in the high school and college age group.

"I think it's a cultural thing," Smith said. "It is often times used in
conjunction with techno music and the PLUR philosophy (peace, love, unity
and respect). It's more than a drug. It's a group of people who buy into a
certain doctrine, and the drugs enhance that feeling.

"You don't hear the horror stories about ecstasy like you do with crack. I
don't think the drug generates that kind of craving. I don't think it's an
addiction."

But it can certainly generate profits for the dealer. Spears said if a
dealer buys in bulk -- 10,000 pills at a time or better -- each hit would
cost about $6. If he in turns sells a 100-pack to another dealer, he will
likely sell the pills for $15 each, which is more than a 100 percent profit.

That dealer would then sell a dose for $25 or $30.

"Kids aren't standing on the street corner, shooting each other over
ecstasy," Smith said. "Mostly, it's a close-knit group of kids who trust
each other. That makes it difficult to get an intense investigation going."

Although some raves are kept hush-hush, everyone knew about the rave held in
Savannah back in April. About 50 law enforcement officers certainly knew
about it, and they brought along media representatives when they crashed
that rave.

They found young people holding glow-sticks, drinking bottled water, sucking
on pacifiers and licking lollipops to keep their throats moist.

Some youths wore cloth masks containing Vicks VapoRub, which police officers
say intensifies the high.

An estimated 850 people in their teens and early 20s attended the rave at
the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge in the 600 block of East Broad Street, a
building with a 250-person capacity.

Because drugs -- including ecstasy -- were located in and around the
building but not on any attendees, officers made no arrests. The Counter
Narcotics Team took some heat from the lack of arrests.

"One of our responsibilities is to make the community aware of potential
drug dangers, and bringing the media along on that exercise increased public
awareness on ecstasy," Smith said. "There were no arrests, I know, but it
certainly got people talking about ecstasy."

Georgia's jails are over-crowded. The governor has determined that people
convicted of violent crimes -- such as robbery, assault, rape and murder --
must serve 80 percent of their sentences.

"The things that really terrorize us, those people will serve the longest
sentences," Smith said. "We want the people who threaten our physical safety
to be in jail the longest. And although drug distribution spawns violence,
it in itself is not a violent crime. So people convicted of selling drugs,
including ecstasy won't spend as much time in jail.

"When you bring a murderer in the front door of the jail, someone has to go
out the back door to make room for him. And the person who will be paroled
will be someone who has committed a non-violent or property crime."

During the Savannah rave controversy last spring, everyone became an expert
on ecstasy, Smith said. Misinformation was disseminated, such as the untruth
that ecstasy promotes sexual promiscuity, he said.

"And everyone wants to say that they don't want drugs in their community,
but they don't make a real commitment to it. They just wink at it," he said.
"Any convenience store you go into has refer rollers behind the counter, and
I'm not talking about the kind that you roll tobacco cigarettes with.

"But the stores that are selling it know what they're selling it for. And
the stores that sell High Times magazine know what they're selling it for.
It's been suggested that marijuana is a soft drug, as opposed to cocaine and
heroin. But it is introductory.

When you talk to kids, they say isn't alcohol the biggest drug problem in
the country? And I tell them yes it is, but do we really need something to
layer on top of that?"

WIDESPREAD USAGE

Spears said ecstasy usage covers the socioeconomic spectrum, but it hasn't
been seen much in the black community.

Officials can say more people are using it by looking at statistics from the
Department of Justice. In 1993, emergency rooms had 68 visits from patients
who became ill while on that drug. Four years later, those visits had
increased to 637.

Here's another telling statistic: in 1993, Drug Enforcement Agency labs
received 196 ecstasy pills for testing through law enforcement seizes. In
1998, that figure rose to 143,600.

That tally is expected to double for 1999.

"The usage is getting pretty widespread," Spears said. "Kids like to
experiment, you know, 'Hey, let's go rolling.' If you tell a kid not to go
climb that tree, he's going to want to climb it the first chance he gets.

"I've had a few kids tell me they'd never try it again because of what it
did to their heart. I guess it depends on what it's mixed with. Others tell
me they loved it. But the stats we get tell us it can kill."

DAMAGE

Skyler (not her real name) entered the rave scene when she was 17 and had
never done drugs. Then she began experimenting with acid and ecstasy.

"We had so much fun with it at first," she said. "We would wear big plastic
rings and dye our hair wild colors. It was so "candy". And it was new and
not at all mainstream.

"I was in it for the music. I love the music. Hard core, jungle, trance,
hip-hop, break beats. We would go to Spectrum on Broughton, but then they
closed that down and we went on to some other clubs."

Skyler's friends also began using drugs, with many of them still involved.

"I'll never touch it again," she said. "When I go to parties and clubs now,
I see people popping 10 pills at a time, and then other people are just
totaling exaggerating what it did to them. They're acting like complete
idiots, laying on the ground and practically drooling on themselves.

"When I see that, I understand why parents and the police are worried about
kids who are doing that."

Skyler said she understands about the damage drugs like ecstasy can do to
the body, and that's why she stopped doing it. She has also seen some of the
longer-term effects prolonged drug use can have.

"Two friends of mine went to a party in Atlanta and they got sick," she
said. "Come to find out, the rolls that they took had been cut with bathroom
cleaner. I couldn't believe it.

"I have friends who do it every weekend, and I've seen what it does to them.
You can't even carry on a conversation with them. They're just, 'Duh.' They
were smart people before that.

"My sidekick and I still go to clubs because we love to dance, and we'll see
people rolling and say, 'Oh, my God. They are making such fools out of
themselves." What worries me is that young kids are out in these places,
too, and they see people doing this stuff, and they start thinking that they
can't have a good time unless they're doing drugs. But they just look
smacked out and gross, grinding their teeth and looking like idiots.

"And you'd be surprised at the number of military guys who are on it. I had
two friends go to jail for it. When they got out, they said they'd never
touch it again, and they haven't."

Skyler said "half of the kids in Savannah" are on ecstasy, and she is
hopeful they will find the courage to talk to their parents about what
they're doing.

"For me, it was a learning experience, part of life," she said. "But for
other people, it isn't a learning experience. It is their life."