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To combat the spread of the drug locally, New York state senator Roy Goodman issued a recommendation that a defendant be charged with ecstasy possession based on the weight of his or her stash rather than its purity. "We're at the point right now with ecstasy that we were with cocaine in the seventies," Goodman says. "It's being passed out like mints by people who have no idea of its negative effects." On July 3, New Jersey governor Christine Whitman signed into law a bill that would put ecstasy in the same legal class as heroin and cocaine.

"It's worse in the cities," says Dr. Mike Nelson, a physician at the St. Vincents emergency room. "But it's also in middle America, because they don't have anything else to do." Congresswoman Judy Biggert, who represents the suburban Thirteenth District of Illinois, is sponsoring a bill to double the minimum jail time for ecstasy traffickers. "Ecstasy has been around for 20 or 30 years now, but we're finally seeing it in the suburbs," she says. "So we're trying to send a message to dealers and traffickers -- right now, the penalties they receive are a joke." Similar legislation, the Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act, has been introduced by Senator Bob Graham of Florida.

Harm-reduction advocates argue that under such laws, the least powerful people in the ecstasy-distribution business, the "mules" who carry the drugs, would receive some of the harshest penalties. "They'll always arrest people like me -- poor people and idiot people," argues Van-Zyp. "The people higher up will make a lot of money but they won't get arrested." Indeed, ecstasy couriers are hardly an upscale bunch. The Customs source notes with some amusement that many of the mules recruited by the Orgad network used their $10,000 fee as a down payment on a trailer home.

Customs and the DEA have labeled ecstasy "agony" in order to raise awareness about the dangers of the drug, but unlike crack or cocaine before it, ecstasy seems to have negligible social effects. "Crack is categorically an addictive substance, so the crack epidemic was much easier for people to understand," says Daytop Village's Porteus. "Unlike crack or cocaine, ecstasy is the sort of drug people use to compensate for something rather than to fulfill a craving."

"We're at the point right now with ecstasy that we were with cocaine in the seventies," says New York State Senator Roy Goodman. "It's being passed out like mints by people who have no idea of its negative effects."

While nearly every week brings the arrest of a newer, more powerful ecstasy baron who seems to have been plucked right out of the cocaine era, there hasn't been the kind of gang violence seen in the late eighties and early nineties. "Ecstasy itself might not cause violent crime," acknowledges Brennan of the DEA. But she predicts that "there will be a rise in violence associated with organized crime as a result of the ecstasy trade." Some cities, like Chicago, aren't taking any chances. In response to a series of ecstasy-related overdoses in the city (most of which were due to pills laced with a deadly drug called PMA, or paramethoxyamphetamine), the City Council there passed an "anti-rave" ordinance, which makes holding such a party punishable by a $10,000 fine. One Chicago police officer even vowed to the Chicago Tribune that "if D.J.'s know it's dangerous to come to Chicago . . . they may think twice about coming here."

But to those who use the drug, such moral panic is hard to understand, much less agree with. "I really don't understand what the big deal is. Yeah, you might get a little too happy, a little too emotional; you might even say some really stupid, cheesy things you regret later. And yeah, there can be a pretty harsh comedown if you overdo it," argues one user. "But compared to crack or coke? Please! When was the last time you saw two crackheads hugging?"