White nights: cocaine is fast regaining its status as the party drug of choice for the young and fabulous.(EYE)

It's four o'clock in the morning, and the party is still going strong at a fashion designer's downtown loft. A leggy It girl in a minidress is bopping to the music like a pogo stick, a fashion heiress is smoking cigarettes on the balcony with her Los Angeles friends, and a blond supermodel and a rock-star wife are chatting with a European prince. But the real action is in the dark back office, where several women in frothy floor-length gowns and gentlemen in tuxedos are huddled around a desk. Pushing aside a computer keyboard, one man casually dumps about half a gram of cocaine onto the table and, using a nearby business card, chops up the teaspoon of powder into several two-inch-long lines. "Go ahead, girls," he says, as guests eagerly take turns snorting the drug through a rolled-up $20 bill. Fueled from the rush of the blow, the women strip down and pull on frock after frock of the designer's wares for an impromptu fashion show. Giddy and laughing, the group frolics until dawn.

Coke is back, and everyone--from the staffs of major fashion houses and the young social set to underage celebrities and their hangers-on--is hoovering it. "It's like smoking a cigarette; nobody cares," says one fashion insider. A hot designer recalls a communal bag of cocaine that was left in the loo for all to enjoy at a recent New York art opening: "My friend came out and said, 'Feel free; there's coke in the bathroom.' Everyone was using it. I mean, there were kids there!"

In the last year, such casual use has become so prevalent that the country's high-end rehabilitation centers are already feeling the effects. As Richard Rogg, the CEO of the upscale Promises treatment facility in Malibu, California, points out, "It's definitely on the rise in New York We are getting some ...