DRUG officials have detected what they see as an alarming trend in children as young as eight getting hooked on the party drug ecstasy, a powerful and dangerous narcotic popular in the United States and Europe.

Also called the club drug, X, E, or XTC, but known pharmacologically as methylenedioxymethylamphetamine (MDMA), ecstasy is popular among young party-goers and clubbites who consume it in order to achieve euphoria while they revel all night.

According to preliminary survey data gathered last year by the National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) as a part of Project Squeaky, an education and prevention programme targeting children between five and 14 years, not only is usage of ecstasy on the rise among Jamaican children, but the age of introduction to the drug is falling.

A year ago, drug abuse officials were concerned that 10-year-olds were being detected among substance abusers; now the age has fallen to eight.

At US$30 per pill ($1,950), a street price quoted by the narcotics police, the drug tends to be out of the reach of most children and teenagers, and narco agents say they have detected no usage among the young.
"There has not been any evidence of children using the drug," said Detective Inspector Conroy Reid, head of the drug education unit at the Police Narcotics Division.

CAMPBELL-GRIZZLE... two years ago we weren't looking at the drug, now the numbers keep coming up

Reid says, while the police are unsure where the drug originates, they believe its formula is too complicated for children to manufacture themselves.

The drug is sold on the streets in downtown Kingston by psuedo-pharmacists, but Reid said the police are unsure whether the ecstasy, sold mostly in the market vending zone, is authentic.
Ecstasy usually comes in the form of pills that contain the synthetically manufactured MDMA blended with other, more familiar drugs such as heroin or cocaine.

In the Project Squeaky survey, admissions to using ecstasy among 1,560 children were as follows:
. 2.2 per cent of 1,560 children in the 8-10 year group;
. 3.8 per cent of 1,623 children in the 11-13 year group; and
. 2.5 per cent of 440 teenagers in the 14-16 year group.

A US police officer looks over a stash of ecstasy tablets and cash seized in a raid.

Those numbers, said NCDA research and information director Ellen Campbell-Grizzle, caused the agency to sit up and take notice.
"Two years ago we weren't looking at that drug, but now the numbers are coming up. The figures suggest that it has penetrated our market," Campbell-Grizzle told the Sunday Observer.
But ecstasy isn't new here.

Five years ago, the narco police, having noted its emergence, began recording numbers of confiscated ecstasy tablets.
In 2001, the division seized 5,070 ecstasy tablets. Three years later, in 2004, the seizures spiralled to 130,000 tablets.
The police clampdown has either frightened the trade further underground or eroded the business, for in the first six months of 2005, the latest data available, seizures had slimmed considerably to 1,035 tablets.

There were also two arrests in 2005.
Drug counsellors say, however, that parents are largely ignorant of the drug's existence, that its use is prevalent at parties, and of its addictive properties.

"Ganja is still the major substance abused. I haven't come across anyone abusing ecstasy or so, but that is not to say that it isn't happening," said Richard Henry, a counsellor with Rize Jamaica, formerly known as Addiction Alert.

Henry says he has heard of the drug making the rounds at parties, but points out that until its use devolves into abuse and addiction, organisations like his would have no information on its real prevalence.

"Most of the people who come here for ganja abuse are sent by the courts. People come in when they're using drugs excessively and have been caught, so there are probably kids using ecstasy or so but not to the point to go into a hospital, or to affect school work, or some scenario where attention is drawn to you," he said.

Checks with the Detox Unit at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) also revealed that no one had actually been treated there for ecstasy abuse.

The NCDA, however, sees real danger, arising from added findings of the Project Squeaky survey, showing that:
. among students 8-10 years - 3.2 per cent in the western region of the island, 2.5 per cent in the central region, and 1.9 in the eastern said they planned to use ecstasy;

. among students 11-13 years - 1.7 per cent in the western and 1.5 in the central region also planned to use the drug; and
. in the 14-16 age group - 3.8 per cent in the west, 2.0 per cent in the central region, and 3.4 per cent in the east, said they too were thinking about using ecstasy.

What the survey did not indicate, however, was where the children accessed the drugs, or why they chose to take ecstasy rather than opt for more readily available and familiar substances like ganja, cigarettes or alcohol.

The 2001 National Household Survey of Drug Use and Abuse in Jamaica, conducted by the NCDA, had calculated XTC usage at 0.04 per cent, which was the same as crack.

Alcohol and ganja were the drugs of choice with lifetime usage records of 39 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. The survey showed no usage of XTC among the female population then.

davidsont@jamaicaobserver.com

Source: US National Institute of Drug Abuse website for teenagers

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World