Ecstasy use is rampant in the city, despite recent crackdowns.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Use of the designer drug ecstasy has declined in recent years, but Oklahoma City police say they’re concerned about its spread from the suburbs to the inner city.
The illegal drug “X,” an amphetamine that triggers the pleasure chemical serotonin in the brain, has penetrated into nearly all neighborhoods, police said.
“Four years ago, I would have said we had a heck of a problem” with ecstasy, Oklahoma City police Lt. Tom Terhune said. “It’s still out there and it’s still available. The demand for it is not what it used to be.”
While officers are arresting dealers with smaller quantities, the dealers are a more diverse population.
Ecstasy once was sold mostly by Asian gangs and pushed through suburbs into club scenes and schools but it’s now also sold by black gangs and has spread into black communities, said Terhune, who heads the Oklahoma City’s narcotics division. He said the drug is most popular among 20- to 30-year-olds.
The drug causes a euphoric and sometimes mildly hallucinogenic feeling by releasing a burst of serotonin, the chemical that regulates mood, said Dr. Herman Jones, assistant professor of neurology and psychiatry at University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
“So you feel really good for about six to eight hours and then mildly depressed — for most folks — for about a week afterward,” Jones said.
The real risk comes from the short-term effects, because of elevated body temperature, which can lead to brain swelling and death. Users can become so caught up in the drug that they become dehydrated or nutrient-depleted, Jones said. Ecstasy also increases the risk of seizures.
Jones said the drug is probably the most common worldwide, but is not as popular here because of the cost.
Over the past three or four years, efforts by city police and federal agents have helped reduce the amount of the drug flowing into Oklahoma by reaching the large organizations that deal in thousands of pills at a time, Terhune said.
Last year, a cooperative investigation by the FBI and city police led to the federal prosecution of 12 people involved in an Oklahoma City-based drug organization tied to Asian gangs. The investigation began in summer 2005 and ended with their arrests in June 2007, according to a federal indictment.
All 12 pleaded guilty, and seven have been sentenced to federal prison.
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