ECSTASY: ARE 'SCARE TACTICS' VALID?

This is your brain. This is your brain after Ecstasy.

The healthy brain fills the skull. It's all there. The Ecstasy brain is
clearly damaged -shrunken, chunks of it missing, like the brain of an
Alzheimer's victim.

It is a disturbing image now being broadcast nationwide to warn young
people tempted by the wildly popular "club drug" known as Ecstasy, by far
the drug of choice today with fans of the big party scene.

But it has set off a firestorm of argument among doctors and drug experts
over how real the dangers of Ecstasy - a psychedelic stimulant sometimes
called "the love drug" - actually are. Critics are calling the federal
government's current anti-Ecstasy campaign overhyped "scare tactics" based
on faulty science.

After all, this is a drug once prescribed by psychiatrists to help open up
troubled patients, to facilitate their treatment and healing. Those who use
it say it makes them open and loving and energetic and peaceful, without
scary out-of-reality trips or harsh withdrawal.

"It reminds you of the old 'reefer madness' days, doesn't it?" said Edward
D. French, University of Arizona professor of pharmacology and an expert in
drugs of abuse.

"Thirty years ago, they tried to tell us marijuana was going to turn all of
us into drug-crazed psychotics. I saw the movie 'Reefer Madness' back then
and laughed at it.

"But the problem is that after all the research that's been done since, we
now know there are some real problems with long-term marijuana use. The
'reefer madness' claims were exaggerated, but there was a kernel of truth
to it.

"I'm afraid that's what we're going to find with Ecstasy. Some of the
warnings about brain damage may be hyped, but I think much of it is valid.
I'm afraid the dangers are real."

Known scientifically as methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), the synthetic
drug was declared illegal and barred from medicinal use in the mid-1980s -
a controversial move that sent it into the underground drug world, only to
explode illegally on the streets in the '90s as Ecstacy.

As overall drug use among teens declined by 20 percent in recent years,
Ecstasy was the dramatic exception, its use jumping 70 percent since 1999
and 20 percent last year.

Nationwide, federal drug agents seized some 13,300 of the illegal tablets
in 1996, compared with a whopping 950,000 in 2000. The ominous trend has
not missed Tucson, with agents seizing fewer than 1,000 Ecstasy tablets in
1998 and nearly 50,000 last year.

Combining the effects of hallucinogens and amphetamines, Ecstasy has
dominated the teen dance scene, allowing users to dance euphorically for
hours to electronic music at giant all-night "raves" often attracting
thousands of kids.

It was numbers like that that finally raised red flags at the federal
level, prompting the National Institute of Drug Abuse to fund $54 million
worth of scientific studies of the drug, then using the results to launch a
national campaign to warn Ecstasy users that they are risking serious and
possibly permanent brain damage.

In a drug alert bulletin issued last year, the institute warned that MDMA
is no benign "fun" drug, as so many teens believe.

"Chronic use appears to produce long-term, perhaps permanent damage to
serotonin-containing neurons in the brain," the bulletin states. "Given the
important role serotonin plays in regulating emotion, memory, sleep, pain
and cognitive processes, it is likely MDMA can cause a variety of
behavioral and cognitive consequences as well as impairing memory."

The bulletin labeled the drug "neurotoxic," citing a series of
"preliminary" study results. Among them:

* A monkey experiment, done at Johns Hopkins University, showed that only
four days of exposure to Ecstasy caused changes in the brain affecting
memory that persisted seven years later.

* Advanced brain imaging techniques, known as positron emission tomography,
found direct physical evidence of damage to serotonin-releasing nerve cells
in human Ecstasy users. In a related study, heavy users suffered memory
loss problems that lasted two weeks after Ecstasy use stopped.

* A United Kingdom study of both current and former chronic Ecstasy users
found persistent impulsive behavior and impaired working memory function
compared with a control group of non-users. These problems did not reverse
after long abstinence from the drug.

A Tucson teen who binged daily on heavy doses of Ecstasy for two weeks
several months ago says she has not been the same since.

Now suffering severe headaches, occasional blackouts, social withdrawal and
memory loss, Dominique, 17, in custody at Pima County Juvenile Court, said:
"I lost a part of myself. I stutter. I have to try harder. I feel stupider
- - it's as if I can't think as fast, or I can't make the right connections.

"And I used to have a great memory, but it's bad now. I just hope it didn't
put a hole in my brain, but I'm worried."

Ecstasy was in the mix of drugs that sent Tucsonan Steve Anthony Lopez, 18,
to near brain death and a monthlong coma in November. Lopez's recovery,
considered miraculous by his doctors, has required intense physical and
behavioral therapy.

But it is the habit of Lopez and Dominique - and almost all Ecstasy users -
to also take other illegal drugs and alcohol with their Ecstasy that has
led critics of these studies and warnings to doubt their validity.

And it is a problem that even the researchers acknowledge is clouding their
results.

For example, the now-famous image comparing the healthy brain to the
Ecstasy brain has been blasted as misleading, because the damaged brain
"comes from someone who abused multiple drugs and took several hundred
doses of Ecstasy, a huge amount the average user will never approach,"
according to a recent column in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (news - web sites).

"The research is seriously flawed, and the scare tactics are not working,"
said Dr. Charles Grob, a UCLA professor of psychiatry who has done an
exhaustive review of the studies sponsored by the National Institute of
Drug Abuse.

In addition to not being able to isolate the true effects of MDMA in people
who are taking several drugs at the same time, Grob points out that monkeys
and rats used in the animal studies were given huge doses of the drug, far
more than an equivalent human would use recreationally.

He also notes that since Ecstasy became an illegal street drug - making big
money for criminal drug dealers - it has been adulterated with other
dangerous drugs and chemicals, possibly causing toxic effects unrelated to
the MDMA.

And indeed, the one Tucson death linked to Ecstasy use was actually blamed
on the drug PMA, a dangerous amphetamine, found in the Ecstasy tablets
taken by 19-year-old Sean McDaniel on the night he died a year ago.

As a result, Grob and others say claims that MDMA causes brain damage are
premature and unproven.

But that is not to say taking Ecstasy is safe. Far from it.

"The way kids are taking this drug today is extremely dangerous," Grob said.

"Not only do they not know what they're actually getting in that pill -
they're taking it in overheated conditions, in a dehydrated state, and with
multiple other drugs.

"The results of all that can be catastrophic - not only brain-damaging, but
fatal."