Pubdate: Sun, 24 Jun 2001
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2001 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://www.seattletimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Fox Butterfield, The New York Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

Violence Escalates As Club-drug Use Spreads

LOS ANGELES - It was finding an Israeli drug dealer dead in a car trunk at 
Los Angeles International Airport 18 months ago that gave authorities here 
the first hint that the club drug Ecstasy was becoming a serious problem. 
He had been killed by two hit men from Israel, said officials of the Drug 
Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Then there was the shipment of 2.1 million Ecstasy pills, worth as much as 
$40 million, that the U.S. Customs Service seized at the airport in July. 
The authorities say it was the world's largest Ecstasy bust.

And now law-enforcement officials say they have seen another worrisome 
development. At a number of large all-night dance parties called raves, 
which draw thousands of young people to the desert east of Los Angeles, 
rival gangs have fought over the sale of Ecstasy. At one rave in March, 102 
people were arrested on charges of selling Ecstasy, assault or resisting 
arrest, according to the DEA.

What is happening in Los Angeles mirrors what is occurring across much of 
the nation, law-enforcement officials and drug experts say. Not only is the 
use of Ecstasy exploding, more than doubling among 12th graders in the last 
two years, but it is also spreading well beyond its origin as a party drug 
for affluent white suburban teenagers to virtually every ethnic and class 
group, and from big cities like New York and Los Angeles to rural Vermont 
and South Dakota.

At the same time, the huge profits to be made - a tablet that costs 50 
cents to manufacture in underground labs in the Netherlands can be sold for 
$25 in the United States - have set off increasingly violent turf wars 
among Ecstasy dealers.

"With drugs, it's always about the money," said Bridget Brennan, the 
special narcotics prosecutor for New York City. "And the dealers are 
starting to see there is so much money in Ecstasy that more people are 
getting involved, and with that comes more violence."

Homicides linked to Ecstasy dealing have occurred in recent months in 
Norfolk, Va.; in Elgin, Ill., outside Chicago, and in Valley Stream, N.Y., 
outside New York City, police records show.

This spring, in Bristow, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., college student 
Daniel Robert Petrole Jr., 21, was shot 10 times in the head as he sat in 
his car. According to court records, local police believed Petrole was 
responsible for distributing more than $1.5 million in Ecstasy and 
marijuana in Prince William County. Two young dealers who worked with 
Petrole have been charged with killing him.

In New York City last month, Salvatore Gravano, the former Gambino 
crime-family hit man, pleaded guilty to running a multimillion-dollar 
Ecstasy ring in Arizona, where he was living under the federal 
witness-protection program. Court documents showed that Gravano was accused 
of hatching four homicide plots to consolidate his control of the Arizona 
drug market.

Most Ecstasy is produced in the Netherlands or Belgium and smuggled into 
the U.S. by Israeli or Russian organized gangs. Some Dominican Republic 
groups have also become involved, selling Ecstasy along with heroin and 
cocaine from drug houses in Manhattan to buyers who come from as far away 
as Virginia, officials say.

Because it is sold as pills, Ecstasy is easier to smuggle than heroin, 
cocaine or marijuana, authorities say. Large shipments flown into New York, 
Los Angeles or Miami are broken down and sent out by overnight-delivery 
services, like Federal Express, to midlevel dealers in other cities.

Brennan said Ecstasy was also widely available on the Internet. Last year, 
her office arrested a man who had been selling Ecstasy on a site called 
House of Beans.

Seizures of Ecstasy by the Customs Service have jumped sharply, to 9.3 
million pills in 2000, up from only 400,000 pills in 1997, said Charles 
Winwood, the acting commissioner of the Customs Service.

The law-enforcement officials and drug experts do not suggest Ecstasy will 
lead to the same levels of violence or social turmoil as crack cocaine did 
in the late 1980s, when thousands of teenage dealers armed themselves with 
handguns and many mothers neglected their children.

For one thing, Ecstasy does not cause the same dangerous changes in mood 
and judgment as crack does. For another, crack gave only a brief high, 
driving addicts back to the street repeatedly in search of another dose and 
often leading them to rob or steal to support their habit.

Ecstasy instead induces a high of up to six hours, enhancing feelings of 
empathy and closeness, its users say.

But interviews with drug experts and teenage Ecstasy addicts in treatment 
programs here show that the drug, known scientifically as MDMA, both a 
stimulant and a hallucinogen, can be disruptive and expose them to violence.

"We are dancing with danger here, because the kids and their parents think 
of Ecstasy as a benign party drug," said Michele Leonhart, the special 
agent in charge of the DEA's Los Angeles office. "They don't see ... that 
people die from overdoses and that some of the dances in the desert are no 
longer just dances, they're like violent crack houses set to music."
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