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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - More than two million tablets of the dance party drug Ecstasy with a street value of about $40 million were seized in what U.S. authorities on Wednesday called the largest ever such haul in the country.

The hallucinogenic drug, also known as MDMA, which users say makes them feel extraordinarily happy, was seized at Los Angeles airport on Saturday after arriving on an Air France plane from Paris in a 15-box shipment labeled pencils but which contained 2.1 million tablets.

Officials at a press conference on Wednesday said the drug probably came from the Netherlands and that the seizure was the largest of haul of Ecstasy in U.S. history.

Customs, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials told a news conference they arrested three people from the Los Angeles area.

They are also looking for a 26-year-old Los Angeles man alleged to be the leader of an international trafficking ring responsible for importing vast amounts of Ecstasy into both the United States and Europe.

Los Angeles U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas called the ring ``a drug organization with tentacles throughout the world.''

The same ring is though to be behind imports of more than 1,000 pounds (2,200 kilos) of Ecstasy found in San Francisco, Germany, Italy and Los Angeles over the past seven months.

The investigation was sparked by discovery in December last year of a shipment of about 100 pounds (220 kilos) of Ecstasy moving from a FedEx shipping facility in Memphis and addressed to a hair salon in Upland, Calif. The drugs were delivered and four suspects were arrested.

DEA agent Mark Trouville said the various hauls of Ecstasy, first linked with mass dance ``raves'' popular in northern Europe, signaled ``a potentially explosive epidemic'' in the United States.

Seizures of Ecstasy in the United States have increased dramatically over the past year. The Customs Service said it had seized nearly 8 million tablets over the last 10 months compared to 3.5 million tablets in 1999.

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