TEENS SEE ECSTASY USE AS A RISKY PROPOSITION

The flap over the police bust of a rave dance party in Racine last fall
triggered weeks of public debate until it finally ended when the city last
month dropped 442 tickets for "being party to a disorderly house."

The legal issue over the mass arrests focused was a civil rights one --
whether people should or could be ticketed at an event where others were
doing drugs.

Only a handful of people were actually arrested on drug possession or sales
charges at the rave, but the dance floor at the hall was littered with
drugs when police stopped the party.

It marked the first time the city had a confrontation over raves and posed
the question here for the first time of how closely the techno-music events
are associated with the illegal use of Ecstasy, a drug with hallucinogenic
properties.

A partial answer on that question came this week in a study released by
Partnership for a Drug Free America which reported that 35 percent of
American young people surveyed who attended a rave had used the drug
Ecstasy, compared to 5 percent of all other adolescents.

The flip side of that, of course, is that almost two-thirds of the
adolescents who attended raves had NOT used Ecstasy.

But then, again, rave-goers were seven times more likely to use the drug
than the general teen population.

Ecstasy affects serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood, emotion,
sleep, sexual behavior and appetite. Users get a feeling of euphoria or
good-will, along with a boost of energy that suppresses the need to eat,
sleep or drink -- which allows them to party for hours or even two or three
days.

High doses can cause a sharp increase in body temperature, lead to
dehydration and cause kidney or heart failure. Some studies of long-term
affects show the drug can kill brain cells, cause memory problems and
trouble with verbal reasoning.

The new study released this week showed some signs that youths age 12-18
were starting to pick up on the drug's downsides. Forty-five percent of the
youths surveyed said they saw a great risk in using it even once or twice
- -- up from 42 percent in last year's survey.

More than three quarters of the 7,084 teens surveyed nationwide said there
is a great risk of addiction and a great risk from using Ecstasy regularly.

Those attitudinal results were reflected in actions as well: teen use of
Ecstasy leveled off last year, actually even declined just a bit and
dropped into the single digits -- going from 10 percent of all youths
surveyed in 2001 to 9 percent last year.

That may not be a precipitous drop, but at least its a move in the right
direction. In a seven-year span beginning in 1994 the number of emergency
room visits involving Ecstasy soared from 253 cases to 5,542.

We're hoping those numbers soon go into decline as well -- and we'll be
watching to see. The results of this year's study were encouraging, but
they're still nothing to rave about.