CANADA FUELLING PRODUCTION OF 'EXTREME ECSTASY'

First there was methamphetamine, a stimulant that in assorted forms
has been around for decades. Then came the designer drug ecstasy,
otherwise known as MDMA and popularized by the rave culture that
mushroomed in the 1990s.

Now there's "extreme ecstasy," a blend of both drugs that U.S.
authorities say is being manufactured in bulk in Canada and shipped
wholesale across the border.

"This probably goes back at least two years," said RCMP
Superintendent Ron Allen, who heads drug-enforcement in the greater
Toronto region.

"When we have taken samples of MDMA for analysis, we have very
frequently found there is a [methamphetamine] content. There was a
case we did about a year and a half ago, a 10,000-pill seizure, that
came back as 80 per cent meth.

"We've been telling the U.S. this is going on. This is a very active market."

Just how active is illustrated by statistics released yesterday by
the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy.

In the 10 northern U.S. states that border Canada, federal
authorities intercepted 568,220 doses of ecstasy believed to be
Canadian-made in 2003. By 2006, that number had soared almost tenfold
to 5,485,619.

And while the 2007 data are still being collated, samples from last
year show that more than 55 per cent contained methamphetamine.

Southern Ontario and British Columbia's Lower Mainland appear to be
the chief points of entry, reflective of Asian organized crime rings'
long-standing grip on the ecstasy trade, with bikers playing a lesser role.

The United States is by far the largest market for Canadian-made
ecstasy -- an industry that churns out more than two million pills a
week, by RCMP estimates -- but it is by no means the only one.

Up until about 2004, ecstasy was chiefly a European product, with the
Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Britain leading the way.

But tighter regulations governing the sale of its ingredients, which
then as now originate principally in China, India and Eastern Europe,
shifted much of the trade to Canada, where drug laws are
significantly less punitive than in the United States.

That same logic fuels the cross-border marijuana industry, another
perennial thorn in Canada-U.S. relations.

Canadian-produced ecstasy, however, travels further than Canadian-
grown marijuana and has shown up as far afield as Australia, Japan
and even Colombia.

So why create a cocktail of ecstasy and meth?

As with all drugs that get "cut" with other ingredients, the big
reason is cost. The ingredients for meth are cheaper than those found
in MDMA, and are often easier to obtain. And for a large-scale
operation, as the dozens of Canadian ecstasy labs dismantled in
recent years have almost invariably been, the extra profits are significant.

As well, the meth component increases the addictive potential, adding
what the Office of National Drug Control Policy describes as "a
facelift" to a drug whose popularity has declined somewhat since
peaking in the late 1990s.

Methamphetamine is the base of the fiercely addictive street drug
crystal meth, also known as crank, which has steadily moved from west
to east in the past decade, wreaking havoc on rural communities
throughout the Prairies and the U.S. Midwest. The Atlantic provinces
have also been badly afflicted.

And while ecstasy has long been regarded as far more dangerous than
aficionados often realize because of its toxic impact on the brain,
adding meth to the mix severely compounds the risks.

Both drugs can disrupt the body's ability to regulate temperature,
heating up a person's system to a point that can produce liver,
kidney and cardiovascular-system failure, and sometimes death,
particularly if alcohol is ingested as well.

As a result, there is dismay in the White House.

"This 'extreme ecstasy' is a disturbing development in what has been
one of the most significant international achievements against the
illicit drug trade," John Walters, President George W. Bush's drug
czar, said in a release accompanying the new figures.

"Historic progress against ecstasy availability and use is in
jeopardy of being rolled back by Canadian criminal organizations."