Mdma Drug

When ecstasy first appeared on the drug scene, Israeli criminal networks were uniquely placed to take advantage. The drug flowed largely from underground labs in the Netherlands and Belgium, where Israeli mob families already had infrastructure in place for smuggling diamonds. As a hub for Israeli immigrants and a party town, Los Angeles instantly became one of the epicenters for the mid-'90s Israeli ecstasy invasion.

A Canadian immigrant living in Newport Beach was charged in federal court Monday in one of the largest Ecstasy-smuggling busts in the region, authorities said. Alexandru Sabau, 37, was taken into custody Friday by agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after being intercepted near his apartment in the 9000 block of Residencia. Sabau was arrested as he arrived to meet with an informant to finalize a drug trade, authorities said.

People dying of incurable diseases are often crippled by depression, fear and anxiety. But the drugs that offer relief for those problems can be overly sedating, making patients mentally foggy. A long-outlawed treatment may be the answer. Within the next few months, a group of late-stage cancer patients will be given an illicit party drug to see if it can help them come to terms with their situation. That chemical is MDMA, better known as Ecstasy.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a pilot study looking at whether the recreational hallucinogen Ecstasy can help terminally ill patients lessen their fears, quell thoughts of suicide and make it easier for them to deal with loved ones. "End-of-life issues are very important and are getting more and more attention, and yet there are very few options for patients who are facing death," Dr. John Halpern, the Harvard research psychiatrist in charge of the study, said Monday.

A four-person panel convenes in a swank Los Feliz lounge in conjunction with the Silver Lake Film Festival. The topic: illicit substances in American culture. Sitting around the table are the kind of indie/alternative types one would associate with a festival such as this: an LA Weekly writer, a documentary filmmaker and the playwright who adapted the cult documentary "Reefer Madness" to the stage. They dress casually and make intimate references to drug use. Not so the final participant.

A restaurateur was sentenced to 12 years, seven months in prison Monday for smuggling 17 pounds of Ecstasy into the U.S. inside a BMW gearbox. David Chi Ping Leung, 44, contended that he accepted delivery of the gearbox as a favor to a friend and did not know it contained illicit drugs. A U.S. District Court jury found him guilty in July 2001. Officials say the Ecstasy had a street value of more than $560,000.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University who last year published a controversial report suggesting that a single evening's use of the illicit drug Ecstasy could cause permanent brain damage and Parkinson's disease are retracting their research in its entirety, saying the drug they used in their experiments wasn't Ecstasy after all. The researchers blamed the error on a labeling mix-up.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have retracted a second study linking the drug Ecstasy to a certain type of brain damage because once again the wrong drug was given to lab animals. Dr. Una D. McCann, a neuroscientist involved in both experiments, said a letter of retraction was sent Thursday to a medical journal, which she declined to identify until editors there decide how to handle the matter.

Researchers have identified a protein that may play a role in the sometimes fatal overheating of the body that is caused by overdoses of the club drug Ecstasy. Experiments at Ohio Northern University here found that mice bred without the protein UCP-3 heat up less after they have been injected with doses of Ecstasy that kill normal rodents.