DETROIT, Oct. 3 (UPI) -- Ecstasy, the euphoria-enhancing rave drug of the 90s, is making a comeback, and much of it is smuggled into the United States from Canada, officials said.
"It's coming back, and coming back strongly," Rich Isaacson, a special agent with the U.S. Drug and Enforcement Administration's Detroit field division, said in a Detroit Free Press report.
"It's one of those things that without keeping a finger or an eye on it, it'll come back even stronger than it was in the rave party era," Isaacson said.
Makers of the drug in Canada have tweaked the formula, making it more potent and more dangerous than before, officials said.
Massive amounts of ecstasy are being smuggled into Detroit by Canadian truckers, where the drug is being manufactured in huge quantities, the report said.
"Our typical courier used to be a suburban female bringing over a couple thousand pills. We're now seeing well-organized drug traffickers, involving Canadian truck drivers," said Daniel Lemisch, chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Detroit.
"We're the first stop on the line for ecstasy coming up," Lemisch said. "It all gets funneled through our district because of the bridge and tunnels."
Recent national statistics show a higher percentage of teenagers using ecstasy, and overall ecstasy use is up among all people 12 and older, while fewer young people fear the drug is harmful the newspaper said.
