Ganja or cocaine may do the job for many people who want to get high and dance all night. But in some of Jamaica’s hip dancehalls and clubs, Ecstasy is what’s proving increasingly popular among some recreational drug users, according to police.

Just how popular remains a mystery.

That’s about all narcotics cops can say about the feel-good drug called Ecstasy.

In the US and Europe, over the past few years, Ecstasy has become a chic drug in trendy clubs that attract youthful crowds.

In Jamaica, narcotics police are keeping a wary eye on the inroads they say Ecstasy is making here. They’re trying to develop decent estimates about how much Ecstasy is being used and imported. And they worry that Ecstasy has yet to be classified as a dangerous drug – making enforcement problematic.

“The fact is, we are not prepared for it,” warned Carl Williams, Jamaica’s top narcotics officer, at a recent conference.

“This is something that’s new to Jamaica,” Gladstone Wright, a superintendent in the narcotics division, told the Sunday Observer.

“The fact is, it (Ecstasy) is not really an offence under the Dangerous Drugs Act,” he said.

Prosecuting an Ecstasy user would fall under laws regulating foods and poisons, he said.

One reason Ecstasy may be attracting little attention – except by proactive cops – is that it appears to have generated few if any complaints: Not from physicians, parents, or cops working the beat.

No Ecstasy users anywhere, after all, have jumped from 10-storey buildings, believing they could fly, as have some LSD users.

Ecstasy has yet to be blamed for turning users into hustlers and streetwalkers – the fate of many abusers of cocaine, heroin, and alcohol.

About the only disgusting side effect, said Wright, is that its users become so thirsty that they’ve been known to slurp water out of toilets.

“It makes you tired, dehydrated, and very thirsty,” he said, adding he’s heard reports that Ecstasy causes brain-cell loss. But to kids who want to dance all night, brain cell loss is probably as scary as developing skin cancer after spending all summer at the beach.

“We are not really seeing it (Ecstasy) in treatment or rehab programmes,” said Ellen Campbell-Grizzle, director of information and research at the health ministry’s National Council on Drug Abuse.

Ecstasy, a combination of amphetamine and hallucinogen, was first developed in the 1940s. It is said to produce a pleasant energy-producing high, lower inhibitions, and make people feel convivial toward one another.

Ecstasy, interestingly, also has produced controversy in another way. In the US, some medical experts have argued that the drug has beneficial psychological effects in controlled therapeutic settings. They have even criticised the US Drug Administration for classifying Ecstasy as a dangerous drug.

But Campbell-Grizzle said: “Our approach to substance abuse and prevention is that there are drugs that have good therapeutic use, but they are abused.”

The drug abuse council, she noted, includes Ecstasy in its anti-drug education programmes.

Ecstasy, a synthetic chemical, is manufactured in laboratories. Wright said Ecstasy found on the island is probably imported from the US and Europe.

In 2001, police seized 5,000 Ecstasy tablets from a person at Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport. The next year, police confiscated 79 tablets, but no seizures have been made since then, Wright said.

Although Ecstasy is not associated with violent drug traffickers as is cocaine and ganja, Wright said that could change if competition and profits increased among Ecstasy traffickers.

Overseas, Ecstasy sells for US$25 to US$40 per tablet, which, in large quantities, is easy to hide and transport.

“We know that some of it has come in and is coming in,” said Wright. “We’re still trying to quantify it.”