Bolt the gates. Lock the doors. We are under attack. The barbarians, or the drug traffickers as they are sometimes known, are storming the ramparts.

We know this because the Burlington Free-Press told us so all weekend. The “over-the-roof” front-page headline (that’s newspaper talk for a story stripped across the top of the page just under the mast-head) on Saturday was: “St. Albans relates story of kids, drugs.”

Then on Sunday, in even bigger type, the lead front-page headline, “Ecstasy traffic booming” introduced a 54-paragraph story about how “the smuggling of Ecstasy into the United States from Canada is increasing rapidly and spreading along the international boundary from west to east.”

Both stories were true. St. Albans city officials did indeed tell Sen. Patrick Leahy’s U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about how an increase in drug use and drug-related violent crime was disturbing both officials and regular folks in the small Franklin County city.

And Adam Silverman’s ably reported and well-written Sunday story documented its premise, citing statistics that federal officials in the ten northern border states seized about 550,000 Ecstasy pills in 2003, but almost 5.5 million three years later.

Appalling. But maybe not for us. Because those who had the patience to read as far as the 35^th paragraph discovered that, shocking headline to the contrary notwithstanding, “large quantities of Ecstasy…almost always continue on through Vermont (to the) major East Coast cities,” according to a senior federal law enforcement officer. “They’re going to the hubs: Atlanta, Boston, New York.”

And in Vermont? Well, Ecstasy is barely a blip on law enforcement’s radar, say both a police investigator and Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan.

These Ecstasy smugglers are zipping right through the state, probably without stopping for lunch, coffee or using the rest-room. Their impact on Vermont would seem to range between very little and nothing at all.

So why does the story lead Vermont’s biggest newspaper on a Sunday?

Well, that’s the Free-Press’s business, but keep this in mind: The story was obviously written with the generous cooperation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which gave reporter Silverman the dramatic details about the Dodge minivan that crossed the border at Highgate with something like $4 million of the drug hidden in a storage console behind the front seats.

Pretty gripping stuff. But behind the drama might lurk bureaucratic self-interest. The federal government is about to distribute oodles of money to perk up the economy. Every federal agency is jockeying under the fiscal boards for its share. And what serves a law enforcement agency’s budget request better than a story that demonstrates both the increasing menace of the crimes confronting it, and yet how effectively the agency is dealing with it?

No doubt ICE’s brass was delighted with the Sunday story.

Which is not to say that Ecstasy isn’t a problem, though it’s not clear how big a problem. A synthetic drug technically known as—are you ready for this?—methylenedioxynethamphetamine, it supposedly creates a feeling of euphoria. It can also kill people, especially when used with alcohol or other drugs, as it usually is, according to SAMHSA, the statistical services branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

If anything, though, deaths from Ecstasy use may be on the decline. Such at least is the evidence in “Drugs Identified in Deceased Persons by Florida Medical Examiners,” a report (in pdf) by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. And though there is some evidence that the use of Ecstasy is growing, not even one percent of the population (12 and older) uses the stuff.

Besides, drug use statistics are notoriously imprecise and often high. They are estimates, and though the folks at the Drug Enforcement Agency and HHS are honest researchers, as with the law enforcement agencies, it is in their interest to estimate on the high side.

Which brings us back to St. Albans, where the story about Friday’s Senate committee hearing was accurate, but incomplete, for instance not mentioning just which drugs those kids are using.

“Prescription pills” is the major problem, Police Chief Gary L. Taylor said Monday, adding that his officers have also recently made some “very large seizures” of cocaine.

There’s little reason to doubt that drug use and crime are rising in St. Albans. But remember: That federal money is going to go to state and local agencies, too. And they’re all scrambling for it, too. Among other things, Chief Taylor urged the committee to support more money for federal programs that help local police forces hire more officers.

Maybe he’ll get it. But it’s interesting that Chairman Leahy noted, “we can’t arrest our way out of this problem.”

Could we actually have here an elected official who knows that the War on Drugs that Richard Nixon started almost 40 years ago is yet another war we are losing?——Jon Margolis