ECSTASY STARS IN RAVE AT COLISEUM

Alcohol-Free Party At Public Venue Awash In Drugs; Authorities Are Overwhelmed

His back rests against the wall, his skin gleams with sweat, his teeth
grind. For minutes on end, James stares, hypnotized, at the blinding lights
of a glow stick flashed in his eyes by a fellow raver.

Go ahead. Ask if he's "rolling." He'll tell you he is. He'll practically
tell you his life's story. Rolling is slang for using Ecstasy. And Ecstasy
- - the "hug drug" - makes people really nice.

"It just feels naturally good," says James, a 20-year-old from Rockford,
Ill. "The more bitter it is, the better it is."

There are lots of happy people at this rave, billed as an all-night
alcohol-free party for teens and young adults at Dane County's publicly
owned coliseum - the Alliant Energy Center of Madison.

There also are drugs. Lots of them.

Raves, DJ-driven techno-music events, are no longer tucked away in
abandoned warehouses. The Pewaukee-based rave promoter paid Dane County
more than $13,000 to hold the April 27-28 event, called Psychosis VII.

"The trip is the fun part of the night," a flier says. It insists drugs are
not allowed.

In fact, Ecstasy seems to be the main attraction.

The use of Ecstasy is skyrocketing nationwide. A recent report from the
U.S. Department of Justice indicated that emergency room personnel had seen
a 500% increase in patients on the drug in the six years ending in 1999. It
is now considered the fastest-growing drug problem in Wisconsin.

The stimulant is manufactured mostly in clandestine laboratories in the
Netherlands and often reaches the United States through Israeli
organized-crime syndicates.

In the beginning, Ecstasy lives up to its name. But over time, the
synthetic stimulant burns out the body's store of serotonin - the chemical
that regulates memory and mood - causing depression so severe that even a
mother lode of anti-depressants is ineffective, experts say.

While Ecstasy's long-term effects are still being studied, researchers
believe that recreational users risk permanent brain damage that can result
in depression, anxiety and memory loss, according to the Department of Justice.

Eerily dilated pupils

On this night, almost 3,000 young people ages 16 and older have streamed
into the coliseum from across Wisconsin and the Midwest. More than 20 of
about 30 young people who are asked admit they are on Ecstasy as they sit
inside the government-owned building. Several say they bought or sold the
pills there.

Like James, they exhibit signs of Ecstasy use, including eerily dilated pupils.

Drugged-out ravers in fanciful dress flit around as scratchy techno music
throbs throughout the coliseum. Some wear translucent butterfly wings on
their backs, powder blue bathrobes and Burger King crowns. As Ecstasy users
regress to childlike emotions, some clutch teddy bears.

A frustrated Dane County sheriff's lieutenant, Tim Ritter, estimates that
90% of the ravers are on Ecstasy or other drugs.

"It might even be 100 percent," interjects Detective Dave Mahoney.

How do they know?

"We ask the ravers, and they tell us," Ritter says.

Ritter says 13 deputies are working the crowd. They will make 15 arrests
before everyone goes home at 4 a.m. Under state law, police can detain
juveniles or call their parents if they admit to being on drugs. The
deputies focus on hand-to-hand transactions - which are harder to catch but
easier to prove in court.

But they can't realistically drag everyone off to the hospital for a blood
test.

"I'm very concerned," Ritter says. "I've crossed my fingers all night
hoping that everyone leaves here alive."

He's worried about ravers such as Lisa, 25, who is on Ecstasy. Entranced,
she leans against a darkened wall, revealing the pacifier - which are
banned from the center - tucked under her sweat shirt. Ecstasy users suck
on pacifiers to keep from grinding their teeth.

"It's about freedom. From society," insists Lisa, a University of
Wisconsin-Madison law student, referring to the rave.

But ask about anyone else, and the response is nearly unanimous:

"When it comes down to it, raves are all about the Ecstasy," says Mike, 20,
of St. Louis. "Raves wouldn't go on without the Ecstasy."

Mike is on Ecstasy tonight, and so are most of the people around him,
judging from the video camera of James Mock, a retired California police
sergeant. Using infrared, looking through his viewfinder,almost everyone
walking past has dilated pupils, which glow eerily.

Mock trains cops nationally about raves and has flown into Madison to check
out the event. "I can't believe they let people under 18 in here," Mock says.

Searching for solutions

As the rave scene became mainstream in the mid 1990s, communities across
the country and in Wisconsin found ways to stop the events. The Wisconsin
National Guard won't allow raves at armories, after being "hoodwinked" at a
New Richmond event where Minnesota television reporters documented drug use.

Washington County prevented a rave planned for the county fairgrounds.
Milwaukee police drove most of the rave scene out of the city with a mass
warehouse arrest in 1992. In Chicago, an ordinance was recently passed
allowing criminal charges against owners of buildings that host raves.

Other communities continue to allow raves in public buildings, citing
concerns that banning them would violate the ravers' right to freedom of
assembly. Some officials and rave promoters say a public venue can't
discriminate against techno-music events if it permits hard rock, hip-hop
or other concerts where drug use also occurs.

The Dane County Sheriff's Department has tried to get raves banned at the
Alliant center for years. The number of drug arrests and hospitalizations
after more than a dozen raves have added up. So have Ecstasy-related deaths
across the state, including Brett Zweifel, a 16-year-old who died in
September 2000 after a rave at a Madison theater.

But Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk and Bill DiCarlo, the building
manager, have refused to ban the events at the center outright, citing
legal concerns raised by the county's lawyers. Instead, Falk and DiCarlo
last year developed a series of restrictions.

They capped attendance at 3,000. They banned pacifiers and glow sticks on
strings, forbade juveniles from entering the building after midnight,
required searches, including removal of shoes, and other restrictions.

"Absolutely no drugs allowed. Offenders will be prosecuted," said signs at
the April 27 event.

But enforcement is haphazard.

Hit-and-miss security

At the door, security guards perform brief pat-downs and make people remove
their shoes.

The guards miss a reporter's notebook.

They miss another reporter's cell phone.

They miss Mock's prescription pill bottle.

They even miss seven hits of Ecstasy, discovered later on a partygoer, say
Mahoney and Ritter of the Dane County Sheriff's Department.

Matt Esser, 19, one of the 25 guards from RTM Security, says his last job
was working at a Pizza Pit in Portage. Esser sits on a metal chair
observing the ravers - and their blatant light-shows with banned glow sticks.

He was trained for "five minutes" to do the pat-downs, adding: "I learned
that tonight. It was the first time I did it. They just said to watch the
drug use - you have to catch someone doing it."

Does he know what to look for?

"Not really."

Troy, a young man in his 20s from Iowa wearing a fuzzy hat, has a pacifier
around his neck."I told the guards it's my comfort toy, and they said OK,"
says Troy, who is rolling.

There's ketamine and marijuana in the room, too. The smell of weed lingers
in the air.

The security makes Ecstasy harder to get, ravers say, but it is still
available at the coliseum.

In the parking lot, five young men in a dark gray car with tinted windows
say they'll sell the drug for $20 a pop.

"Go inside," they say. "Forty-five minutes. In the smoking area near the
front."

Ravers show how they smuggled the drug past security.

"It was easy to get in," says Justin, 21, of Rockford, revealing a pouch he
tied around his genitals.

Ravers nearby give each other massages - Ecstasy heightens the feeling of
touch to orgasmic levels. Young people also thrust lights as bright as
flares into the faces of other drugged-out youths. People on Ecstasy are
fascinated by swirling lights.

A security guard walks past - wearing a glow stick on a string around her neck.

Freedom of assembly

At 4 a.m., as the rave winds down, DiCarlo, the building manager, says
goodbye to the ravers. Plastic give-away bags containing fliers for future
raves are piled on nearby tables.

"We have extraordinary security," DiCarlo insists as one young woman walks
behind him with a banned pacifier looped around her neck. "It's very
disturbing to see that," he says.

"We're obligated to rent the building to any legal activity," he says.
"Whether it's the Ku Klux Klan or whatever, it's not our place to decide. I
don't see what more we could do in searching, short of following people
into restrooms and doing body cavity searches. I'm feeling I'm being
attacked here (by reporters' questions). This is a legal event. Freedom of
assembly."

Asked about all the ravers admittedly on drugs, he says, "Why would you
believe a criminal?"

Falk, the county executive who is running for governor, was not at the
coliseum. Last week, she expressed concern over the drug use. "We try to do
whatever we can to keep drugs from coming in," she said.

"We will continue to monitor to see what additional steps we can take to
prevent anything from coming in. I am told the number of arrests is average
and consistent with the number of people in the crowd."

Falk later said she needed to hear from her staff and re-evaluate what had
happened at the event.

"Corporation counsel has advised me that because it is a public building
that we run, that we have some obligation to not abuse constitutional
rights of people to utilize a public space," she said. "We also have an
obligation to ensure as best we can public safety."

Bruce Haase, who, along with a partner runs Plantations Promotions,the
promoter of the event, said Psychosis VII brought in about $60,000, but he
spent about $50,000 to put it on.

Unlike the partygoers themselves, Haase doesn't call Psychosis a rave. To
him, it's a concert, just like Ozzy Osbourne or Madonna.

"I don't do drugs," Haase said in a phone interview. "I'm 26 years old. I
have a 4-year-old daughter. My family was brought up against that. . . . If
I thought the only reason people were coming to my events was to do drugs,
I wouldn't throw them."

But didn't he see the pacifiers? The kids with dilated pupils? What about
the people who admitted they were on Ecstasy?

Maybe they're lying, he said.

If he's right, a lot of people are lying.

Like the young woman, blond hair in ponytail, who whispers to Shannon, 21:
"Do you know where I can get some?"

Shannon is a dazed-looking secondary education student who attends the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She's at her fourth rave and admits to
rolling.

"Go find the people with the glow sticks," she tells the woman in the
ponytail. They have Ecstasy for sale, she says.

Moments later, Shannon jumps up, and announces: "I'm going to find the glow
sticks."