Saturday, June 30, 2001
But interviews with drug experts and with teenage Ecstasy addicts in treatment programs here show that the drug, known scientifically as MDMA, both a stimulant and a hallucinogen, can be disruptive and expose them to violence.
''We are dancing with danger here, because the kids and their parents think of Ecstasy as a benign party drug,'' said Michele Leonhart, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Los Angeles office. ''They don't see what we see, that it's a neurotoxin with serious side effects, that people die from overdoses and that some of the dances in the desert are no longer just dances, they're like violent crack houses set to music.''
posted at 1:32 AM