ECSTASY USERS POP UP ALL OVER

The newest guests at exclusive house parties probably traversed the globe
to attend.

Superman, Mickey Mouse, Playboy Bunnies, Tom & Jerry, all arrive sporting
designer labels, and promising to make you feel good - really good.

The comic book and cartoon character names delineate popular brands of
Ecstasy, a designer drug that authorities say they have discovered
statewide, from the northernmost tip of rural Sussex County to the far
southern reaches near the Delaware River border. Once a staple of dance
clubs and dark, late-night warehouse raves, Ecstasy has rapidly emerged
from an underground subculture to become the social lubricant of suburban
living rooms.

"We really changed our view on it as a club drug," said Alexander Gourley,
a special agent in the Drug Enforcement Administration's Newark Field
Office. "Now we're seeing it at house parties. Any drug dealer that can
make a buck will sell it."

To a chemist, the drug, first used as an appetite suppressant in Germany in
1914, is known as methylenedioxymethamphetamine. Often called E or X by its
users - the E Crowd - the tiny pills are a pharmaceutical innovation
bastardized by simple economics.

It costs pennies to produce Ecstasy in the illegal labs of Belgium,
Luxembourg and the Netherlands, and is, in turn, sold in clubs at the
Jersey Shore and out of home sock drawers for up to $25 apiece, authorities
said. An initial investment of $100,000 for 200,000 pills can quickly turn
a profit of $4.9 million.

The lure, users say, is extremely keen sensory perception. The slightest
touch is exaggerated to the brink of orgasm, which often parlays parties
into orgies. Accessories, such as menthol inhalers, when blown into the
eyes, create an indescribable sensation. Brightly colored glow sticks and
rhythmic techno music heighten the elation.

"You just want everybody touching you," said 18-year-old Charles Downes,
who is battling an Ecstasy addiction at Daytop Village, a Mendham
rehabilitation center for teens. "Everything pleases you. Someone touches
your arm, barely caressing, it just feels great."

Although Ecstasy has yet to surface from the underground into a
street-corner trade, authorities say users can score hits with as little as
a phone call to the right person. In the past, all one needed to do was pay
a cover charge at the right club and buy the pill once inside. The drug
elevates body temperature to the point where Passaic County Senior
Assistant Prosecutor Sal Bellomo says, "You're basically boiling your
organs and your own blood." Users pay top dollar to cool off. Unscrupulous
club promoters capitalized on the growing trend by turning off air
conditioning and selling water for up to $15 a bottle.

Pacifiers and lollipops ease jaw tension associated with Ecstasy use.
Stimulant effects can trigger coma, heart attack and organ failure. After a
6- to 8-hour high, users plummet into an "E-hole," a phrase users have
coined for coming down.

"Cell phones have made drug dealing so damn easy. It's very mobile in the
suburban areas. In Paterson, you know you can go to this doorstep or this
corner and get what you want. Here, it's preset," said Wayne Police
narcotics Sgt. Ron Gaeta, describing transactions in parking lots and
private homes

DEA statistics show that the number of people who tried Ecstasy tripled
between 1996 and 1998, and use by 12th-grade students doubled from 1996 to
2001. "Earlier this year, it was enough that I met with the Board of
Education. We had three to five overdoses in the first few weeks of the
school year. It's alarming to us," Gaeta said.

Authorities say that the Ecstasy that landed those Wayne teens in the
emergency room at St. Joseph's Wayne Hospital may have been funneled into
the country by a new wave of Dominican smugglers who divert the drug from
Europe through Caribbean islands and into the United States. Latino dealers
encroached on the industry, once run by Israelis, and gained a foothold in
the wake of Sept. 11, after airport security tightened its grip on Middle
Easterners.

Couriers fly to western Europe, where Ecstasy is manufactured and pressed
into pill form, Gourley said. From there, they return to the Dominican
Republic carrying the tablets in suitcases, plastic Baggies, inside
hollowed-out picture frames or "any conceivable method" and through a
fairly lax customs checkpoint. A short boat trip shuttles couriers to
Puerto Rico, where they board flights bound for Newark Liberty
International Airport, called by federal agents "one of the principal
centers of Ecstasy importation."

Because Puerto Rico is an American commonwealth, airline passengers aren't
subjected to a customs check on arrival in New Jersey, said DEA agents, and
Homeland Security agents only search for explosives and weapons. Smugglers
then distribute Ecstasy through previously established heroin and cocaine
corridors.

In early March, DEA agents intercepted a courier who had flown from
Amsterdam to Singapore and eventually arrived at Newark airport with 2,400
hits sewn into the lining of the Spandex bike shorts he was wearing,
Gourley said. Since the pills collectively weighed about 2 pounds, they
were difficult to detect; though agents were able to tail and arrest him in
downtown Newark, where he was delivering the stash to a runner.

Such trafficking efforts filter across the state and into Paterson, the
epicenter of Passaic County's illegal drug market. Narcotics detectives
there saw a 75 percent rise in Ecstasy sales so far this year, though the
11 arrests don't come close to the sales of other narcotics.

In most cases, dealers sold the drug in tandem with marijuana, and had less
than 100 hits - indicative of local use rather than mass distribution, said
Paterson Detective Troy Bailey. Some were busted on the corner of Marion
and Chadwick streets, a North 9th Street apartment, and on Market Street
near Eastside High School - a territory claimed by a street gang calling
itself the Market Street Dominicans, authorities said.

"They're selling it because there's good money in it," Bailey said. "It
seems to be an out-of-town thing."

Once believed to be the drug of choice for white suburban youth, Ecstasy
has transcended racial and ethnic barriers. Blacks, Latinos and Asians are
now "rolling"- an E Crowd slang term meaning to be high on X.

"We've got all ethnic groups using Ecstasy now," said DEA Special Agent
Mark Moger. "Years ago, people would only use X when they'd go to a rave or
a club. Now they use it every day at small parties."

Those words hit home for Jess Trout, an upper-middle-class teen who arrived
at Daytop in November, after rolling more than 300 times in the past three
years. She did her first hit at age 15 at a friend's house party and in the
throes of her addiction, popped up to seven tablets a day, she said. Unlike
many users, Trout never experienced pulsating club lights and steamy dance
floors, but, instead, simply hung out with other friends in Middletown who
were also getting high.

"I was me, but I was me with confidence. After I started doing it, I didn't
think it was a drug. It was just part of my routine," said Trout, a former
cheerleader who was also a member of the tennis, softball, track, swim and
cross country teams, before stealing money from her father to support a
growing drug habit. "It's horrible. His precious little baby girl is in a
rehab, and he doesn't understand it. My biggest assignment was walking to
the park and picking out a swing. But we wanted to see the crazy other side."