Nor is ecstasy confined to party-prone young people. Tom, a 44-year-old movie executive, takes ecstasy with the intensity of a club kid ("If it's good, I'll take like six in one evening"), but only in his downtown loft. "Usually when we do ecstasy, it's a very quiet, intimate thing," he says. "I've never understood the whole concept of doing ecstasy out in public. One time we did E and went to Vinyl. I just ended up sitting there for about ten minutes and leaving."

Just how widespread is ecstasy in New York? "It's everywhere," a suburban Long Island teenager now enrolled at Daytop Village's Huntington, Long Island, adolescent drug-rehab facility told New York. "It's easier to get an E pill than a pack of cigarettes. You need I.D. for that, you know." Another teenage patient there agreed. "We'd talk about it during social studies: 'You gonna do E this weekend?' " One dealer even said his aunt asked him about it: "A friend of hers read about it and was interested in trying it."

"Everybody is into ecstasy," says Suave, another dealer, "straight, gay, black, yellow, red, white, brown, whatever."

Well past 2 a.m. on a Wednesday night, Suave is kicking back on a tan leather couch in the VIP room of Float, a multilevel midtown nightspot known for hosting dot-com launch parties and boasting Prince as a regular. Discreetly holding a cigarette-size joint by his side, he's regaling a dozen or so fellow partyers -- editors, stylists, Web designers -- with stories about his week of club-hopping. "Yo, the VIP room at NV is the illest," he says, pausing to look down at the cell phone on his hip that vibrates with an incoming call every few minutes. "There were so many models up in there I thought I was in a fashion shoot." The Gucci-and-Fendi-clad group, here for promoter Derek Corley's weekly upscale hip-hop party, laughs in unison. "Have y'all been to Joe's Pub on Tuesday nights?" Suave asks. "The girls are so fine."

But Suave isn't there for the women. Like so many of the beautiful people around him, he goes clubbing to network. He's a new kind of ecstasy dealer, one who sells from a cell phone instead of a crinkled plastic Baggie full of pills. "I would never sell in a club," he says. "The security sweats you like mad. Plus, you have no idea who you're selling to. It could easily be an undercover cop."

"Everybody is into ecstasy," says Suave, who deals to professionals, "straight, gay, black, yellow, red, white, brown, whatever."

At first glance, Suave seems like just another sociable single guy on the make -- albeit one who hits several high-end hot spots like Ohm, Cheetah, and Justin's in a single night. "I'll see a pretty girl or maybe a guy that looks cool and strike up a conversation," he explains, adjusting the brim of the Ralph Lauren baseball cap that hides a shock of kinky hair. "I'll ask, 'Do you smoke weed?' or 'Do you do ecstasy?' If they seem cool, they get my number, and we'll get a relationship going from there."

Suave's casual networking style suits his clientele perfectly: His regular customers include editors from at least one national magazine, brokers at major investment banks, and Website designers at dot-com start-ups. In fact, he only deals to professionals, because "they treat me right," he says. "These aren't the kind of people who'll be begging me for free pills." He won't sell to ravers, because they always ask to meet him in nightclubs and "they're terrible with money," he says. "They can't hang on to it for a minute."

Like Suave, Greg, who has dealt ketamine, cocaine, marijuana, and mushrooms at one time or another, conducts business far from the limelight. He sells only out of his Chelsea apartment and only to friends of friends who have one of the yellow business cards with his pager number. "You don't have to go to a club to get E anyway," he says. "You can just make a few calls and have it before you go out for the night." To keep his neighbors from getting suspicious, he maintains well-known "office hours" -- by 10 p.m. most nights, he's in bed or watching a movie on his DVD player. Some of his customers keep similar hours. "I've sold to couples in their sixties and people in their forties who have families," he says. "Just last month, a friend of mine who's in his mid-thirties finally tried ecstasy for the first time," he continues. "He bought a couple of pills from me and took his girlfriend out on a rowboat in Central Park."

Because of increasing demand and his high profit margin, he says, "selling ecstasy is a ridiculously easy way to make money." Greg sells pills for $30 that most dealers buy for $8 to $11. Suave buys pills for $11 from a distributor in Brooklyn, then sells them for $20 to $30 to customers who beep or call him. "If they're buying a bunch of pills," Suave says, "I'll throw in two or three to make them feel good about working with me." For purchases of 100 or more, he charges $20 per pill. "Quantity calls are what keep me in business," he says. "Keep those orders for 100 and more coming, and I'm a very happy man."

A typical day for Suave begins in the late afternoon, when he's awakened by a phone call or beeper message from a customer at a law firm, publishing house, or Internet start-up. "My music-industry customers are my favorites," he says, "because they hook me up with concert tickets and free CDs." (Another regular client is helping him put together a portfolio so he can pursue a career as a model.) He delivers ecstasy on foot or by taxi until around midnight, then heads out to clubs to meet more potential customers. "On a bad week, when I'm not getting many calls or I'm too lazy to really work it, I'll make $1,000," he says. "On an average week, where things are business as usual, I'll make about $3,000 to $4,000. A great week, where there's a holiday or a big party, I'll make $5,000."

Though the frenzy for ecstasy is national -- legislators in both the House and the Senate are working on bills to increase penalties -- the two most popular U.S. points of entry for the drug are JFK and Newark airports, according to law-enforcement sources. So far this year, New York accounts for more than 2 million of the nearly 7 million hits of ecstasy seized by Customs. "Because of our airports and the presence of organized crime, New York is a critical port for the importation of ecstasy," says Brennan. Even given these conditions, Brennan struggles to account for the ecstasy explosion. "The numbers are staggering," she says.