ECSTASY USE SHOWING UP IN BROCKVILLE

It's not rivalling marijuana as the local drug of choice, but ecstasy has
made its way from the big-city raves to the local bar scene, city police
report.

"It's here, we know that," Sergeant Scott Fraser said Tuesday, after a
quantity of the drug was seized from a city apartment unit in a Monday raid.

"It's very common around here on our local bar scene."

But while occasional seizures and tips tell police the synthetic amphetamine
MDMA is in use by late teens and 20-somethings, it's not as ubiquitous as in
Ottawa, Montreal or Toronto.

"Here it's popular, it's not the thing when people are going out," Fraser
said. "It's not the drug of choice in our town."

That would be marijuana.

But the trend still has Fraser concerned, both because of the potential
contamination of a synthetic drug cooked up by amateurs and the fact that
the pills, bearing happy faces and other logos, are being aimed at kids.

Parents could spot ecstasy by the stamps put on the tablets, ranging from
Japanimation characters to corporate logos.

"That's a major concern - it looks like candy," Fraser said. "Who's it being
directed to? Obviously young people."

The relatively high price, $25 to $30 a pill compared with $10 for a gram of
pot, may keep it out of many teens' hands.

A 24-year-old Brockville man was charged with drug trafficking after police
seized marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and psilocybin - better known as magic
mushrooms - from an apartment Monday.

Previous incidents - there are few - include ecstasy, cocaine and steroids
seized and a 23-year-old man charged in Elizabethtown-Kitley and three
Gananoque 20-year-olds charged moving 600 tablets bound for the U.S.

Ecstasy was big news five years ago with urgent warnings aimed at teens
going to all-night parties known as raves. A dozen young people died in a
year and a half, including a Toronto boy whose death was the subject of an
inquest.

American research shows that, while ecstasy's hipster cachet may be waning,
it's increasingly caught on with teens even as drug use among young people
falls.

Partnership for a Drug Free America, for example, launched an anti-ecstasy
campaign last year after its research found 12 per cent of teens had used it
- - still way behind the 41 per cent who had smoked pot.

Researchers say there's no doubt ecstasy can make users feel good. They
report feeling confident, insightful, sexy and talkative.

It can cause scary effects, too: visual hallucinations and anxiety, nausea,
sweating, rapid heart rate, high blood pressure and hyperventilating.

Users who consume the drug more than once a month report delusions,
hallucinations and panic attacks even days after taking the drug.

Coupled with dancing all night - as ravers often do - ecstasy can lead to
convulsions and heart and kidney failure.

And that's not considering what could be adulterating the homemade pills.

Methylenedioxymethamphetamine - MDMA or ecstasy - can be cooked up by drug
producers with ingredients and instructions easily found on the Internet.
But when police have the substances analysed, they often find drugs
including PCP and Ketamine, an animal tranquilizer, Fraser said.

"You take a pill and you don't know what's in it," he said. "Anyone using
ecstasy is gambling."