Sam’s workday usually starts late in the afternoon as Vancouver’s aggressive partiers begin looking for a way to chemically enhance their fun. Most nights of the week, a host of twenty-and thirtysomethings call Sam’s work phone throughout the evening and into the early morning looking for ecstasy and cocaine. Despite recent headlines about the deadly PMMA-laced ecstasy pills, Sam’s phone still rings with clients searching for a good time.

The charismatic 30-year-old drives in and around down-town Vancouver meeting clients in his nondescript hatch-back. Sam, who agreed to the interview on the condition The Sun use an alias, says his customers include kindergarten teachers, financial advisers and even doctors.

In his designer scarf and coat, Sam more closely resembles his customers than the stereotypical Lower Mainland drug dealer tattooed and clad in sparkly Affliction or TapouT T-shirts.

The University of British Columbia graduate fashions himself as an independent businessman, carefully growing a base of patrons. He began with a circle of close friends and grew his roster of clients through word of mouth to about 150. Some are loyal weekly callers, others occasional purchasers who contact him every few months. Almost every week he puts a new customer into his work phone, a cheap cell with a number separate from his personal smartphone.

“Honestly, they’re like me – they’re partiers,” Sam says of his clientele. “I wouldn’t say I have anyone who’s an addict.”

Recreational users of ecstasy and cocaine, “these are people with functioning lives,” he says. On a Friday night, his first customer is waiting around 6 p.m. outside his workplace – a financial institution on Dun-bar Street. After jumping into the back seat, the first thing the clean-cut guy in his early 30s says to Sam is, “What’s with all the deaths, dude?” Since last August, five British Columbians – three men and two women ranging in age from 14 to 37 – have died from ecstasy laced with PMMA, the same lethal chemical linked to a spate of recent deaths in the Calgary area. This year and last, there have been a total of 18 ecstasy-related deaths in B.C.

Sam reassures his client that his $10 MDMA (a higher grade of ecstasy) capsules are safe and the overdoses that have shaken the Lower Mainland and Calgary are most likely from cheaper pressed pills. Sam agrees to drive his client to Joey restaurant on West Broadway as they chat about his plans for an upcoming concert. He pulls five MDMA pills from a hollowed-out Axe deodorant spray can and hands them to the man along with a baggie containing half a gram of coke in exchange for $90. Sam says he made $60 from that 10-minute car ride.

“My cost is higher than others because I don’t have economies of scale.”

Sam entered the trade after getting fed up with his post-graduate dead-end job. He hopes to retire in five years with a million dollars in drug money. He says he made a $9,000 profit last December – $1,800 on New Year’s Eve alone – and though his business isn’t as mature as he would like, he averages over $4,000 a month.

He says he loves the lack of pressure and social aspect of his new career, but hates lying to friends and family and the prospect of going to jail.

Sam says he buys up to four ounces of MDMA every two weeks and caps them himself using a machine that does a hundred at a time. His supplier, a drug dealer friend who first took Sam under his wing a year and a half ago, bought two kilograms of the drug last June. That stock is almost gone and they are now looking for another reliable batch, Sam says.

He doesn’t cut his MDMA pills with anything, but admits he doesn’t know what has been put into the powder by the time it gets to him. “I’ve tried a fair bunch and honestly I don’t know, which is actually pretty indicative of probably a lot of guys out there.”

He says he takes care to sample any new product himself and says his customers don’t have to worry about overdosing on a “bad batch.”

“I think people are pretty aware of it,” Sam says. “Me personally, it doesn’t worry me because I know my stuff’s okay.”

Most of his clients tell him they only take one or two pills a night. “I can honestly say I don’t feel like I’m hurting people … I’m sure people would disagree.”

When a twentysomething hipster jumps into Sam’s car near 22nd Avenue and Nanaimo Street to pick up half a gram of coke, she attests to the strength of his MDMA.

“On New Year’s [Eve] I puked for like an hour,” she says. “It’s so good, I wonder if I should just start taking half [a capsule].”

Sam cautions her to drink water next time until the nausea stops. “I was fine after-wards,” she says, handing Sam money and opting for coke this time.

Today’s ecstasy users are young professionals and college students who use the drug socially at house parties, clubs and concerts to get a burst of energy and a rush of euphoria. They see the colourful ecstasy pills imprinted with cartoon characters and cute logos, or sold in innocuous-looking capsules, as much different from a bag of crack cocaine or heroin – the dangers of which are widely recognized by society.

As someone who was once familiar with ecstasy, Amelia Collins, 22, fondly recalls her wild year when she took it once or twice a week with a close group of friends as a 17-year-old in Duncan.

The Langara College business student says the drug would amplify the group’s experiences when taking long walks together or dancing at raves. She said her group knew the different ecstasy dealers and there was a great sense of com-munity among the ravers.

“I’ve seen bad trips and what-not, but . I never knew any-one that went to the hospital,” Collins said. “We got to know the types of E we were get-ting because you’d know the colours.”

She said certain pills would have more speed and give a more intense energetic high, while others would bring a mellower body high.

“Everyone would have their own preference.”

After a while she gave up the drug when she realized she couldn’t stay out dancing till 6 a.m. regularly. Kids these days seem to take any pill put in front of them, she says.

“I think it’s unfortunate. I know there’s just so many kids, they hear about it, they think they should be doing it, but they don’t know anything about the drugs,” Collins says. “It’s literally just about getting high now.

“Half the time they don’t know what it is, it’s just an available pill.”

The drug has become much more mainstream, says Burnaby RCMP Sgt. Scott Rintoul. A synthetic drugs expert, Rintoul has talked to over a thousand ecstasy-using British Columbians and conducted a 10-year study on the drug, which he began in 1998.

“I would say the market in B.C. is saturated with ecstasy and other similar-type drugs,” Rintoul said. “When I say saturated … the drug is now every-where – it’s a very cheap and affordable drug.

“Cheaper than alcohol. Depending on who you’re buying from, you’re going to pay between $3 and $10 per capsule – it’s available to anyone.”

Sam says he doesn’t sell to anyone under 20. In his own mind, he differentiates the party drugs like cocaine and ecstasy that he sells, from more denigrated street drugs like heroin and crystal meth.

“To be honest I don’t know anything about heroin, meth, oxy that kind of stuff,” Sam says. “When you watch Intervention, when you see those people, how could you be the person giving them that?”

Sam says he would absolutely stop dealing to someone who told him they had an addiction. “No one’s ever actually been like, ‘Okay, stop answering my calls,’ ” Sam says.

However, Rintoul says Sam is kidding himself if he thinks cocaine is not addictive. And even those who take ecstasy will end up having big problems.

“Some of the inherent risks are not only the use of the drug itself, but what indirect behaviour do we see from people who use ecstasy?” Rintoul said. “Why is it called the love drug? Is it like Viagra or Cialis? Absolutely not.

“Because of its unique effects, people open up. Their mood changes and they just feel so good about themselves, so good about the environment they’re in, that they become risk-takers.”

In recent weeks through-out the Lower Mainland the drug has, on several occasions, claimed one victim among a group of friends all taking the drug.

Each person reacts differently to the drug and the different chemicals it is cut with Rintoul says. “When we see cases of victims who consume the drug with friends, [we think] that person must have had a bad batch,” Rintoul said. “The experts are saying there is no good batch.

“A single tablet has been responsible for death before and a single tablet will be responsible for death in the future.”

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