America Undercover: Small Town Ecstasy, Ecstasy Deaths in London, Clinic handing out Ecstasy and Oxycontin in Seattle WA

Clinic a 'supermarket for Oxycontin and ecstasy,' community leader says 

A state licensing loophole is allowing a Seattle methadone clinic to more than double the number of addicts it serves, and that rule has neighbors asking why they should be stuck with the consequences.

First Hill's Therapeutic Health Services is a drug treatment facility that helps painkiller and heroin addicts get clean using a synthetic opioid called methadone.

Because the clinic is located on a street corner, it technically has two addresses. That fluke allowed the clinic's director to apply for -- and receive -- two licenses that have doubled the clinic's clients.

"They have 1,000 clients coming each day," said Jim Erickson of the First Hill Improvement Association. "State law says 350 is the limit."

The clinic's Norman Johnson admits it's an unusual arrangement, but said waiting lists to enroll in opiate treatment facilities are typically 300 people deep. Because of that high demand, Johnson believes it's a benefit to society to treat the added patients.

Johnson said junkies often get sick and clog up emergency rooms, while many others wind up in jail, further taxing public services.

"This community really needs this program, because otherwise they are going to pay for it either in taxes, or on the street, or in crime," Johnson said.

Erickson agrees that THS helps recovering addicts, but feels the clinic isn't playing by the rules and is inviting large numbers of drug dealers and users into his  neighborhood.

"It's a supermarket for Oxycontin and ecstasy," he said. "And there's a lot of money changing hands."

America Undercover: Small Town Ecstasy

New ecstasy fears after two dead and one seriously ill following club weekend

The clubbers, aged 20 and 21, died within hours of each other at the same hospital after attending separate dance music events at Alexandra Palace in north London over the weekend. Another 20-year-old man, also thought to have attended an event at the venue, is also being treated at the same hospital where he is said to be in a serious but stable condition. Last night Scotland Yard issued a special appeal to any young people who may have taken drugs at or before either of the events to seek immediate medical attention amid fears dealers may have been peddling an ultra-strong batch. It comes just a week after the charity Drugscope, which monitors trends in underground the drug trade, warned of an alarming rise in the popularity of ecstasy which dominated the 1990s rave scene but fell out of fashion. A surge in use follows an influx of a more-potent Chinese variants of the drug which is based on the chemical MDMA, or methylenedioxymethamphetamine.