Pubdate: Mon, 23 Jun 2003
Source: Herald News (NJ)
Copyright: 2003 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.northjersey.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2911
Author: Alisa Camacho
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

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." 
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MAP posted-by: Thunder