Thanks to sky-high profits, fairly light federal penalties, and the relative ease of smuggling ecstasy as opposed to cocaine or heroin (U.S. Customs finished training the first group of dogs to sniff out the drug only this March), many of those would-be smugglers aren't exactly practiced criminals. In March, Joseph Colgan, the 33-year-old owner of the Minetta Tavern, was charged with masterminding a ring to import more than 80,000 pills to the U.S. from Amsterdam via Paris over five months. (He pleaded guilty last week.) His courier? Scott E. Rusczyk, a lawyer with the New York firm Kronish, Lieb, Weiner & Hellman.

Most couriers are less upscale. The Amsterdam-based writer Hendrikus Van-Zyp, 54, and his wife, Maria Van-Zyp Landa, 47, agreed to bring a package they were told contained a few thousand ecstasy pills to the U.S. in exchange for a trip to Aruba and $10,000 that Hendrikus told New York he needed for his wife's bone-cancer treatments. "They had a good feeling about us," Van-Zyp says now, speaking from the visitors' room at the Otisville Federal Correctional Penitentiary, where he's serving a five-year sentence for ecstasy smuggling, "because we were an older couple." But when he and his wife were bumped from their original Amsterdam-Newark flight on October 22, their luggage remained aboard the plane. During a routine check of unclaimed baggage, ecstasy was found in their suitcases, and the couple were arrested by Customs officials posing as airline workers.

The Van-Zyps were carrying what was then a record seizure of ecstasy at a U.S. airport, but their loss probably put barely a dent in the organization that recruited them. "I think they put ten people on the airplane, so when they catch two, then they're not out much money," Van-Zyp says.

"I knew we were in trouble," he says with a throaty, nicotine-scarred laugh, "when they brought the suitcase and I tried to tip the guy and he said, 'Keep it.' "

A good portion of all the ecstasy coming into New York ends up in the hands of high-school students, and not just young ravers, according to Caroline Sullivan, director of Daytop Village's Huntington, Long Island, adolescent drug-rehab facility. "We're not talking about kids in the club or bar scene -- we're talking about kids with ten o'clock curfews," Sullivan says. "Their first experience is usually at a party or friend's house. The feeling they get from the pill is incredible, and they want to replicate that experience over and over again, until they build up a tolerance for the drug. Then they start to take several doses at a time." Sullivan says 85 percent of the teenagers admitted to Daytop have used ecstasy, an increase from just 20 to 30 percent one year ago (though none have been admitted solely because of ecstasy).

"Ecstasy has enormous appeal, but people crash afterward," says Dr. Robert Klitzman. "If they're doing ecstasy on a Saturday night, there's 'Suicide Tuesday.'"

At one elite private school on the Upper West Side, the drug "has become more popular than weed," according to Laura, a 17-year-old who has done ecstasy several times and has a regular dealer. "Most of the kids at school do it. They do it at house parties or when they're just hanging out, not really at clubs."

The ecstasy scene at Bronx High School of Science "ranged from preppy kids to this kid who was in my Hebrew-school class," according to Shari, a recent graduate. A few of her fellow students sometimes sold pills, she says, and when they were out, "we all knew this guy on 46th Street in the theater district who literally had boxes full." Often, they took ecstasy at home: "I hosted my share of ecstasy parties where someone would walk in the room with 100 pills and they'd be gone within twenty minutes."

Neither Manhattan teens nor several young Daytop Village patients from suburban Long Island interviewed by New York say they had much trouble finding the drug. "E was around every weekend -- my brother played on a soccer team with my dealer, so I knew him well," says Charlie, 16. "I've never been to a club. I was like, 'Why waste money on the club when I could just save it for drugs?' "

Leah, a 16-year-old who lives on the Upper East Side, says most of her friends do ecstasy and doesn't think her occasional use of the drug will do her any harm. "I've had some of the best times of my life on ecstasy, and I'm not an addict, so what's the problem?" she says. "For the Fourth, me and my friends took some pills really early in the night and then we went to Exit," she explains. "When we got out of the club in the morning, the weather was so nice we decided to take a few more rolls. It was just amazing." The club might have enhanced her high, but she's not interested in becoming part of that scene. "It's way too druggy," she says, without irony.

"Kids who are going to birthday parties or hanging out at friends' houses are doing it," says Carrie, a Trinity graduate who says she was one of the few students at her high school who didn't try ecstasy. "It's the drug of our generation," she says. "I know friends who are scared to do coke, but they've done E more than a few times."

That attitude persists because "the jury is still out" about ecstasy's addictiveness, according to A. Jonathan Porteus, a doctor of psychology at Daytop Village. "It's definitely habit-forming, though. It becomes associated with certain things, like sex or dancing, and becomes a habit. You'll hear people say, 'To have sex, you need X.' " He pauses and laughs. "And some people can't listen to Orbital without it."

Whether or not the drug is addictive, says Porteus, "ecstasy is going to affect your ability to concentrate, you're going to have more trouble feeling happy, there's going to be a bit of spaciness there." Because MDMA alters the brain's serotonin levels, which control mood, Porteus also believes the comedown ecstasy users experience after a weekend of partying could last longer than they think. "There's going to be a lot of people taking anti-depressants in the future."

"Ecstasy has enormous appeal, but people crash afterward," says Dr. Robert Klitzman, a clinical psychiatrist at Columbia University. "If they're doing ecstasy on a Saturday night, there's 'Suicide Tuesday,' a brief but deep depression. Still, teenagers are particularly vulnerable, Klitzman says, because "high school is an awkward time for everyone, and this is sort of the anti-rejection drug."