HIGH ANXIETY

Every year drugs worth an estimated $300m are sold to the thousands of
young ravers who flock to Ibiza for its trademark cocktail of sun, sex and
dance music.

High anxiety

The man I needed to see was called "Lizard" and I found him curled up on a
plastic sun lounger outside a heaving beach bar at Playa d'en Bossa, just
south of Ibiza Town. Lizard, a Spaniard in his 30s, had somehow fallen
asleep. Waves of thumping trance music blaring from two nearby speakers
hadn't disturbed him. True to his reptilian nickname, he seemed comfortable
in 32C mid-afternoon heat, even though he was wearing jeans and a scruffy
shirt.

Lizard stirred long enough to deliver the bad news. He'd sold out of
Ecstasy pills earlier in the day, but was expecting another consignment
later that evening. The choice, he said, was to wait a few hours or trade
with one of the other dealers moseying on the sea front. Within 10 minutes,
a man who said his name was Francois was kneeling in the sand next to a
group of Britons, handing out flyers for a club that opens at 8am on Sunday
and closes 22 hours later.

Francois produced two Ecstasy pills (stamped Y2K) from his sunglasses case
and sold them to one of the men for 4,000 pesetas ($25). There was nothing
surreptitious about the deal. Francois wasn't looking over his shoulder as
he pocketed the money, and nobody in the vicinity seemed to notice. There
were no police officers in sight. Francois disappeared in the direction of
the bar, where dozens of people were defying the sun by dancing underneath
a series of water sprinklers.

Playa d'en Bossa, known to everyone as Bora Bora beach, is one of the
trendiest places on Ibiza. It is a clubber's idea of paradise - great
music, cheap drugs and high expectations of casual sex.

Michael Birkett, the vice-consul who resigned in horror at the behaviour of
British tourists last year, has a different perspective. To him, Bora Bora
is a hedonistic hell. It is the attitude of the Ibizans, though, that is
the most intriguing. They moan about the excess every now and then, but
they are pragmatic: drugs and clubs are fantastic business.

While tales of orgiastic revelry and hooliganism have consistently grabbed
headlines over the past five years, British detectives have watched in
bewilderment, trying to fathom how the drugs trade has flourished unchecked
and why their Ibizan counterparts have had such miserable luck trying to
identify the ringleaders of the $300m industry.

Last year they began to realise what was going wrong. Investigators at the
national criminal intelligence service (NCIS) began liaising with the
Spanish authorities over ways to stop trafficking to Ibiza and the other
Balearic islands - Majorca, Menorca and Formentera.

During their research they uncovered some revealing statistics. In 1997,
600,000 Britons holidayed in Ibiza. The total number of Britons arrested
for Ecstasy possession that year across the Balearic islands was two,
neither of them on Ibiza. According to official Spanish records, no Britons
were arrested for Ecstasy possession anywhere in the Balearic islands
between 1990 and 1996.

Last year 700,000 Britons went to Ibiza, and 23 were arrested for drugs
offences; this year 900,000 Britons will have visited the island by the end
of the summer. There have been 19 arrests so far, but it is not clear how
many involved Ecstasy.

The Civil Guard on the island is overstretched - out of season, the
population is just 83,000 and crime rates are low - but police in Britain
have been astonished by the Ibizan attitude to the problem.

"The island is the drugs capital of Europe, probably the world, during the
summer, and it has been for many years, but who would guess it?" says a
source. "The police want to be seen to be doing things, but they are not
very constructive. They can't understand the idea of intelligence-led
policing. If they see someone trafficking or dealing, they will step in.
But they don't look for it."

Even basic techniques are ignored. Officers rarely do spot-checks of
tourists at the airport or search cars coming off the ferries in the ports
at San Antonio or Ibiza Town.

John Abbott, the director-general of NCIS, led a British delegation to
Madrid and Ibiza last year to encourage a more proactive approach, without
much success. "We don't get any meaningful information from the police on
the island," says a source. "It's frustrating, but there is nothing we can
do."

Until recently, traffickers have not had to worry unduly about the
authorities, though this might change as investigators from several
European countries begin to concentrate on the island. Two pan-European
surveillance operations are currently under way that could force
traffickers to use more sophisticated methods than driving a car crammed
with drugs from the Netherlands and catching a boat to the island.

"That's about as difficult as it has been up until now," said one dealer,
who was drinking in a bar in San Antonio, a rowdy town on the west of the
island that is overrun by Britons between May and September.

Drugs, mostly Ecstasy but also cocaine and speed, fuel the dance culture,
and with 35 British clubs hiring venues this year, including Cream, the
Ministry of Sound and Manumission, the biggest headache for dealers is
ensuring punters know where to buy their pills and having enough of them to
go round.

According to Howard Marks, the one-time drug baron, who has been working on
Ibiza as a writer during the summer, the street trade is controlled mainly
by Spanish gypsies, who recruit people such as Lizard to roam the beaches
during the afternoon and tout for business.

The club managers dissociate themselves completely from the practice, but
it is clear that some of the people who hand out promotional flyers are
taking advantage of their front-line position to make extra cash. Like
Francois, they either supply drugs or they can point you to someone who can.

"A lot of holidaymakers tell us this is the way they bought drugs," says
Jose Luis Montoya, a reporter on Diario de Ibiza, the island's daily
newspaper. And the gypsies do not have a monopoly. "The dealers who work
the clubs in cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and London during the
winter go out to Ibiza in the summer, because that is where the money is,"
says a detective.

Finding the links between the front-line dealers and the traffickers is
problematic. Rumours suggest that villains on the Spanish mainland are
masterminding the operation and they are in cahoots with a small number of
businessmen on the island.

Ben Turner, editor of the clubbing magazine Muzik, says the club owners
have "secret backers who stay in the shadows, but nobody really knows who
they are".

One British club manager elaborates. "It is pretty obvious the Britons who
come out here are small-time. The island has a way of protecting its own
people. They have five months of the year to make as much money as they can
before Ibiza goes to sleep. Up until now, there has been very little
trouble. I am not paying protection money and I don't get hassled by
gangsters. It is the main reason why working out here is such good fun. You
don't get the kind of drug-associated violence and intimidation you get in
Britain. I am not involved in the drug scene here, and there is no pressure
to be involved."

Marks says the criminals have not gelled into mafia-style gangs - yet. "I
am the type of guy who tends to attract . . . attention wherever I go, and
I have to say I have not come across mafias in Ibiza. It is not the Spanish
way. The scene is less organised than that at the moment, probably because
security on the island on the whole is so poor and the police don't get
uptight about who is selling what. The relationship between the clubs and
the police is surprisingly good."

A clubber who flew to the island last week to join 7,000 others at a
Ministry of Sound evening at Pacha nightclub says: "Most of the people who
go to Ibiza for the music don't get involved in any trouble. The island has
a unique atmosphere. We have tried other places, such as Portugal and
Cyprus. But nowhere else give you the freedom to misbehave."

The drug squad officers who are urging their Ibizan counterparts to be more
aggressive disagree. Next year the number of Britons going to Ibiza will
soar above the million mark. There will be more dealers selling more drugs.

Before long, they say, the loose confederations that have made millions
from the drug industry in the past few years will become tighter, more
aggressive gangs. As one of them says: "With so much money and so few
controls, one day the place will explode."