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"The bottom line is kids don't even know what they're taking."
After a few years on the job as an undercover narcotics detective for the Miami-Dade Police Department, Joe Ryan experienced his first ecstasy stake out at a rave party.
"I had never seen anything like it," said Ryan (not his real name). "There were well over 300 kids, mostly young teenagers, and at least 200 showed the effects of MDMA (ecstasy)."
"The rave started at midnight and by 5 a.m., it was like a room full of zombies. Everybody was incoherent. I could see many kids severely dehydrated, which is one of the potentially deadly effects of ecstasy. They (the rave organizers) were selling bottled water at $7 a bottle and a lot of the kids couldn't afford it. They were begging their friends to share because they had to have water."
Since then, Ryan has worked with homicide detectives on several ecstasy-related deaths, and has become a reluctant expert on the drug's effects. Ecstasy, he says, causes devastating harm. Though the heightened feeling of tactile awareness and sensitivity produced by ecstasy have earned it the nickname of "the love drug," MDMA is a psychoactive drug, similar to methamphetamine in structure, with both stimulant and hallucinogenic properties. It is most often ingested as a pill.
Though several ecstasy-related fatalities are reported each year, mostly involving dehydration, the greatest health hazards posed by ecstasy surface gradually. The drug damages neurons that use serotonin-a key regulator of mood, aggression, and sexual activity-to communicate with each other. Research has linked MDMA use to depression and long-term deficits in memory and critical thinking.
Compounding the threat, says Ryan, is the fact that drugs sold as ecstasy often contain other substances, or are derivative drugs, some of which can be even more dangerous. "The bottom line is the kids don't even know what they're taking," he says.
Ryan knows from experience that despite the clear risks of ecstasy, many teens have no reservations about using it. For one thing, it doesn't carry the stigma of so-called "street drugs" such as cocaine and heroin, whose dangers are widely known, and which are usually snorted or injected. "Ecstasy has a safe, benign image," says Ryan. "Manufacturers go to great lengths to package and market these drugs so they're appealing to youth. They put logos on the tablets that make them attractive, things like doves and the word 'love' on them. If it's St. Patrick's Day, they'll put a shamrock on there."
According to Ryan, ecstasy manufacturers-often based in Europe-have launched sophisticated Internet marketing campaigns aimed at a young U.S. market. It's difficult to counteract the positive play the drug receives on the Internet and through the club scene grapevine, he adds, especially since manufacturers and dealers can afford such a generous marketing budget: an ecstasy tablet, which can be produced for seven to ten cents, sells for $20 to $30 on the street.
The lure of such huge profits, along with ecstasy's cuddly image, converts many young people into dealers willing to travel to Europe, buy the drug, and smuggle it into the United States. "We are getting college kids now who are large-scale MDMA traffickers," Ryan says. "We just arrested some college seniors who were selling $10,000 a week worth of MDMA. These kids probably never would have traveled to Colombia to buy a kilo of cocaine."
The use of ecstasy and similar club drugs is rising quickly in Miami-Dade County, says Ryan, and the situation is likely to worsen. He now sees more adults, as well as younger children, using ecstasy, and he expects domestic production of the drug to increase soon. "It doesn't take a complicated system to produce this, and some of the Internet sites offer recipes," Ryan says. "I don't think we've seen kids using drugs like this since the 1960s and LSD."
To learn more about Ecstasy, click here.
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