COLUMN ONE : Two Drugs Crash the Party Scene : Nitrous oxide--or laughing gas--and the hallucinogen called ecstasy are sold openly at underground events called raves. The good feelings induced by the substances mask danger.

The dark warehouse, illuminated only by laser lights and littered with party flyers, is packed. Energized “techno” dance music--distinguished by a rapid thumping bass--is spun by a deejay and paired with film loops that repeatedly project psychedelic images on the vibrating walls.

In the back, two young women giggle as they suck on a balloon. They lie down, pass out, then get up to inhale some more.

Every weekend, thousands of young people--from teens to those in their 20s--attend Southern California underground raves like this one, all-night dance parties where nitrous oxide--laughing gas--is often peddled openly in $5 balloons in a carnival-like atmosphere.

The candy store availability of the drug belies its danger. On Friday, three young men were found dead in a pickup truck in Chatsworth, victims of an overdose of laughing gas. They inhaled gas from balloons and apparently left open the valve on a canister of nitrous oxide in the sealed cab of the truck. Also inside the cab were flyers for underground parties.

“If used by itself, without oxygen mixed in, it can kill,” said Dr. Ronald Siegel, a UCLA drug researcher whose book “Fire in the Brain: Chemical Tales of Hallucination” is due out this month.

“If a balloon contains 100% nitrous and that’s all you’re inhaling, that’s dangerous,” he said. “Eighty percent nitrous is the richest mixture dentists will give. But at parties, there’s no oxygen in those tanks.

“The horror stories are very odd and very rare. But I’ve seen people go into convulsions and have seizures. And I’ve seen permanent brain damage.”

As for the circumstances of Friday’s deaths, Siegel said, “they basically crawled inside a balloon. One wonders why it doesn’t happen more often.”

Nitrous oxide produces an instant feeling of lightheadedness and loss of balance, speeds the pulse and induces euphoria. It is not physically addictive and its effects last only a few minutes.

Siegel said laughing gas produces “a much more cognitive experience, where a person says: ‘Just a little bit more and I’m going to get the secret of the universe. Just a little bit more.’ So that keeps them hitting the tank. So they ignore the dangers.”

Normally used as a dental anesthetic--it also can be legally obtained for such uses as recharging aerosol canisters and souping up race-car engines--nitrous oxide has been used as a recreational drug since the 19th Century. Also known as nitrous and N-O, its popularity resurged in the late 1980s and led to the deaths of several youths in the country.

In 1988, the bodies of four young adults were found in a dental storage room in Cedar City, Utah, apparently the victims of laughing-gas asphyxiation. In Birmingham, Ala., a party host was charged with manslaughter in 1990 after he allegedly provided laughing gas to a teen-ager who died after inhaling it.

More recently, it has resurfaced at underground West Coast rave parties.

One of the young men found dead Friday left a message on his answering machine telling callers that he and the other two were going to a legal rave-style club Thursday night.

“I do a lot of traveling around the country, and there’s definitely an increase” in use, said Sgt. Thomas Page, head of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Drug Recognition Experts Unit.

State law prohibits the recreational use of nitrous oxide, and first offenders in California face up to one year in jail and fines of up to $1,000. Repeat offenders can receive up to life in prison and escalating fines.

LAPD officials say the department does not track arrests for illegal use or sale of nitrous oxide because laughing gas is uncommon on the streets, is considered less dangerous than drugs such as heroin, PCP and cocaine, and generally is not associated with violent crimes. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office reports no prosecutions related to it last year.

Because of its low cost, laughing gas is becoming the more popular of a double-drug whammy that permeates the budding underground warehouse party scene in Southern California.

The scene is a transplant from England’s rave phenomenon, which is fueled by the will to party nonstop outside the purview of authorities. Lawlessness, in fact, is a common theme found at local rave parties: They move from spot to spot every weekend to evade police and create the anarchic atmosphere that attracts not only laughing gas peddlers, but dealers of $20-plus capsules and “disco biscuits” laced with a designer drug called ecstasy.

Ecstasy, first patented in 1914, has come full circle during the last decade.

The hallucinogenic amphetamine appeared confined to the Texas, Louisiana and West Coast college crowds in the mid-1980s. It hit the British “acid house” underground as a replacement for LSD late in the decade, and is back in the United States, riding a wave with European dance music.

Ecstasy, or MDMA (short for Methylenedioxymethamphetamine ) , distorts mental acuity and speeds the heartbeat. Short-term use can cause insomnia, and it is dangerous for those with heart problems.

With long-term use, its hallucinogenic effects subside, its pulse-quickening effects survive and psychological addiction can ensue. More important, ecstasy damages the brain’s chemical transmitters, although the extent is unknown.

No deaths have been attributed directly to ecstasy in the United States, experts say. But “it puts small holes in the brain,” said Art K. Cho, a pharmacologist at UCLA. Because research on the drug is fairly new and has not documented much physical or psychological repercussion, he said, “no one knows what these holes mean.”

“To the extent that people don’t know much about it, it’s a little bit scary to see people pouring it into their bodies.”

Those who have used ecstasy say the drug generates strong feelings of intimacy. A 24-year-old fashion designer, who calls herself Irene III, says she used it only once and warns: “You could have unsafe sexual encounters.”

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey in 1990 found that 3.4% of respondents age 19 to 32 said they had tried ecstasy. But “statistics do not address the rising popularity of designer drugs” because the substances are often found on society’s fringes, according to a University of Mississippi study on ecstasy and other drugs that was published last year in American Family Physician magazine.

Southern California authorities say they are not sure where the seemingly abundant supply of ecstasy comes from, though the Bay Area and Texas are rumored hot spots.

Ecstasy--which at one time was used for psychotherapy--has no legal use.

Criminal penalties for sale or use of MDMA are similar to those for laughing gas. And like its warehouse party cousin, no records are kept for ecstasy arrests. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office reported no ecstasy prosecutions last year, and only two ecstasy labs were seized nationwide in 1990, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Law enforcement officials admit that they have been unsuccessful in snaring ecstasy and laughing gas users and dealers in the underground club scene--for several reasons:

- The events are elusive. “Those promoters are doing a slick job,” said Sgt. John C. Beimer, a detective in the LAPD’s Narcotics Division Training Unit.

- The drugs do not produce aggressive, criminal activity as a side effect. “There’s nothing that would bring these drugs to our attention,” the LAPD’s Page said.

- Officials only have the time and money to deal with major drugs. “Both ecstasy and laughing gas are out there--we know they’re out there,” said Beimer. “But we can’t even get to the big problems such as cocaine.”

After Friday’s deaths, however, Page said authorities will pay more attention to laughing gas: “We’ll take enforcement action at underground parties and any other setting in which drugs are abused. That’s a safe bet.”

Laughing gas and ecstasy are so prevalent at raves that promoters, patrons and deejays openly mock the Establishment with advertisements, clothes and music that incorporate the coded language of the drug culture.

Promoters attract rave devotees by advertising in the underground publications, notably Urb and Sensured magazines, where colorful announcements proclaim “a visual feast for the mind and soul.”

Flyers are also passed out at Southern California nightclubs, coffeehouses and record stores.

Among those seen in recent months were ones promising “Free Balloons for the Kiddies” and “Friendly X-mas treats.” And raves with titles such as “Double-Hit Mickey” and “American X-press” parody a few of the many nicknames for ecstasy--”Mickey Mouse” and “X.”

T-shirts brazenly proclaim “Just Say NO.” (This means say yes to nitrous oxide).

The energized techno dance music at raves sings, “Give us an E,” teases “eat ‘em up--yum yum,” and talks about the “insomniac” that an ecstasy user can become.

“You don’t have to have an IQ of 300 to realize that when a club reaches the early hours of the morning and a lot of people are left and still screaming and shouting, there’s ecstasy,” one underground deejay said.

Many area promoters emigrated from Britain to reinvent a scene that deflated there after gangs became involved in drug trafficking and the press tenaciously pursued stories of rampant drug use. The promoters, many of whom hold day jobs, are after-hours entrepreneurs who hope to make big money by renting empty warehouses, hiring deejays and lighting technicians and charging $20 to party till dawn.

And while some rave promoters say they decry drug use, they maintain that other organizers profit from laughing gas and ecstasy.

“To make money at a rave you have to pack in a lot of people,” said a Los Angeles promoter who goes by the name of Edge Dinero. “And that’s pretty hard to do. So the money has to come from somewhere.

“Look at what the promoters are driving and how they’re dressing. Fifty percent of them sell it, the other 50% do it.”

A British promoter, who asked not to be identified, said he has been approached repeatedly by laughing gas vendors who offered up to $4,000 for the exclusive right to sell balloons full of laughing gas at his events. “I frown upon it and won’t let it into any of my clubs,” he said.

He also fears that keener competition in nitrous oxide trafficking will bring in gangs and violence that some blame for ruining the rave scene in the British city of Manchester.

“The thing that worries me about nitrous is people buying the concessions and the possibility of gangs getting involved here,” he said. “There is an unsavory element going on at some of the raves.”

Some other promoters have said they want to phase out laughing gas because of potential liability. A Los Angeles rave organizer who goes by the name Daven The Mad Hatter said: “We’re afraid somebody’s going to do it and fall over and hit their head or something.”

Or die?

Laughing gas “is just not something that any of the legit promoters wanted anything to do with,” the British promoter said Friday after hearing of the three deaths.

“What everyone thought would happen has happened.”