The leader of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's drug enforcement division in Canada reacted with astonishment to recent statements by U.S. drug czar John Walters about so-called "extreme ecstasy" being shipped across the northern border, the Canadian Press reported Jan. 21.

Walters issued a press release claiming that Canadian drug dealers were shipping ecstasy laced with methamphetamine to U.S. users, saying that 55 percent of seized ecstasy samples contained meth.

"This extreme ecstasy is a disturbing development in what has been one of the most significant international achievements against the illicit drug trade," Walters said. "Cutting their product with less expensive methamphetamine boosts profits for Canadian ecstasy producers, likely increases the addictive potential of their product and effectively gives a dangerous 'facelift' to a designer drug that had fallen out of fashion with young American drug users."

But Superintendent Paul Nadeau, head of the Mounties' national drug-control agency, said he has never heard of 'extreme ecstasy.'

"I shook my head when I read the release that they put out," said Nadeau. "That term is unknown to us, certainly in Canada, and I can tell you that I've spoken to law enforcement people in the U.S. and they've never heard of it either, so it would appear that it's a term that somebody came up with in a boardroom in Washington, D.C."

Ecstasy has long been cut with amphetamines or other stimulants, with the latest Canadian tests showing that about 35 percent of ecstasy pills containing meth, down from about 75 percent. "According to our stats the presence of methamphetamines in ecstasy is dropping," he said. "Why now do they feel the need to announce this to the world?"

The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, which Walters heads, did not respond to reporters' requests for comment on Nadeau's remarks.