ONE THING ABOUT RAVES: DRUGS DO HAPPEN

Police and promoters agree on one thing: Raves equal drugs.

``I would say that anywhere there is a rave, there is Ecstasy,'' said New
Westminster police Cpl. Richard Marsh.

Bylaws in New West and Richmond allow raves. And every weekend the cops
find themselves confiscating the designer drug, Ecstasy, from ravers.

Marsh has six cases of Ecstasy on his desk right now.

There are different recipes for the drug known on the street as ``E.''
Essentially, however, the drug of choice at raves is a combination of
60-per-cent stimulant and 40-per-cent hallucinogen.

There is no trademark on Ecstasy pills, which allows dealers to pass off
everything from caffeine to methamphetamines to the ravers who take drugs.

The largest illicit drug lab ever discovered in Western Canada was raided
recently in Chilliwack. It had enough chemicals on hand to produce 200
kilograms of Ecstasy worth an estimated $30 million to $40 million on the
street.

The lab is currently the subject of a criminal investigation.

Some of the witch's brew of Ecstasy ingredients are: formic acid,
hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide, lithium, aluminum hydride,
methylamine, sodium cyanoborohydride, piperonal and nitroethane.

Ecstasy is ``a fairly involved process'' and is harder to make than
methamphetamines, says Cpl. Scott Rintoul of the RCMP's Drug Awareness Unit.

Drug use at New Westminster raves has resulted in four overdoses so far
this month.

Provincial coroners began screening corpses for the drug a year ago, but do
not have any hard numbers on fatal overdoses due to Ecstasy yet.

The promoters of Saturday's event in Vancouver say they do everything
possible to keep the drugs out of raves: Bag searches, frisking and pocket
checks.

But somehow the drugs always sneak in.

``I'm not saying there isn't a drug problem, but in the last three events
I've promoted there have been a total of 13,000 people, and only one single
ambulance call,'' said Chester Le May of Go Productions.

``Compare that to any other venue of the same size and it's a pretty good
record.''