MANDY WHITING/Daily Bruin Ravers wait in line to enter a rave
club in Los Angeles, while security secures the area.
By Amanda Schapel
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
[email protected]
By a little after midnight Sunday, ticket prices more than
tripled at Orion, a popular all-age dance club downtown. Teenagers
wearing baggy pants and candy necklaces mixed with older club fans
in line, where the trance music playing indoors was reduced to a
deep, repetitive beat.
Should legislation currently in the California Assembly pass,
promoters of electronic music clubs like Orion would face increased
scrutiny from local permitting authorities and law enforcement.
The bill, which will be considered on the assembly floor
Thursday, would require promoters of “any electronic music
dance event commonly referred to as rave parties” to submit,
30 days in advance of their event, evidence that they can recognize
and prevent the use of illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia.
Before becoming law, the bill must be passed by the assembly and
state senate, and signed by the governor.
Law enforcement supporters say the bill would better protect
young people that attend raves by forcing promoters to pay
attention to illegal use of club drugs like ecstasy, GHB, ketamin,
methamphetamine and LSD.
Civil liberties groups and music fans say the bill unfairly
targets electronic music and might bring about unforeseen
consequences for both promoters and participators.
This is not the first time citizens have seen legislation
targeting raves and specific kinds of music as conducive to illegal
activities ““ and it won’t be the last.
The current bill is aimed at indoor, club or warehouse raves
that already submit permits for their events.
According to reports from the Drug Abuse Warning Network,
emergency department visits resulting from club drug use are rare
and usually involve the use of multiple drugs.
Ecstasy, the drug singled out in much of the recent legislation
against raves, is popular amongst middle-class adolescents and
young adults and can result in long-term cognitive impairment,
according to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
November 1986: Drug Enforcement Agency declares
ecstasy a federally classified schedule I drug.
1994: Criminal Justice and Public Order Act
restricts events in the United Kingdom where music is played with a
succession of repetitive beats. December 1999:
National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Alan Leschner calls
ecstasy “a potential public health plague.” May
2000: Dateline NBC conducts an undercover investigation of
illegal drug use at rave parties. 2000: The
“Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Bill” is introduced in the
U.S. Senate. August 2000: The Office of National
Drug Control Policy begins $5 million campaign to warn young people
about dangers of taking ecstasy. July 2001:
“Ecstasy Prevention Act of 2001″ introduced in both
houses of Congress. February 2002: A federal judge
rules the government cannot ban masks, pacifiers and glow sticks at
dance events in a case fought by the ACLU.
sources: ACLU, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, Drug
Policy Alliance, Drug Enforcement Administration, Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration
“It is my sincere belief that our children are facing an
ever-changing and often dangerous world. In authoring this bill, I
know I am doing my part to help protect all children by limiting
our children’s access to drugs,” said assemblywoman
Nancy Havice, D”“Bellflower, in the analysis portion of the
bill.
According to Carlos Benilla, chief of staff for Havice, children
are using drugs openly at rave events, so the legislature wants to
be assured promoters are paying attention to what goes on at the
events.
The groups that oppose the bill acknowledge that drug use occurs
at rave events, but say the threat the bill poses to civil
liberties cannot be justified.
The Southern California chapter of the ACLU has launched an
Internet campaign against the bill, calling it unconstitutional,
unreasonable and vague.
According to its Web site, the bill “denies to one group
of people the same level of freedom that others enjoy.”
Benilla had no comment about ACLU’s campaign and
accusations, but said “we’re not targeting a specific
kind of music; we’re targeting a specific kind of activity
that is taking place.”
The problem, according to the Center for Cognitive Liberty and
Ethics, is that the bill says just the opposite, and
“profiling people on the basis of what type of music they
listen to … is absurd.”
For numerous civil liberties groups, this is not the first
anti-rave legislation they have opposed.
Britain began targeting electronic music in the early ’90s
to reduce drug use at raves. For its purposes, it defined rave
music as any music with successive, repetitive beats.
According to UCLA musicology professor Robert Fink, that
definition became a joke when artists began to subtly manipulate
the music so that their beats were irregular by fractions of a
second.
The regulations in Britain demonstrate “what happens when
you let politicians get into the musicology business,” Fink
said.
In the United States, legislation against raves began in the
late ’90s in the form of local initiatives enforcing juvenile
curfews and licensing requirements for large public gatherings.
Legislation similar to that in the state assembly is currently
pending in Congress to hold event promoters criminally responsible
for the illegal conduct at their events and to provide financial
incentives to communities that pass anti-rave laws.
Much of the regulation of rave events, however, relies on older
statutes like federal “crackhouse laws” against
building managers that know about the use or distribution of
controlled substances in their buildings.
Marsha Rosenbaum, who conducted the first federally-funded
sociological study on ecstasy, said the regulation on raves is part
of “the drug scare du jour” over ecstasy.
“Increasingly draconian penalties for use and distribution
are being devised by eager politicians, making (ecstasy)
America’s new “˜reefer madness,'” Rosenbaum
said in an article for the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
When Fisk teaches “History of Electronic Dance
Music” at UCLA, he emphasizes that legislation against raves
is part of a larger societal concern with rebellious music.
Since the industrial era, there has been socially deviant music
associated with the release of stress through dance that mimics and
mocks the monotonous element of factory work, Fisk said.
The danger of the new bill is that it could more deeply polarize
the electronic music scene in California by pushing small raves
further underground, Fisk said.
Some fans of electronic music are disenchanted with the rave
scene in its current state though, and see the new bill as a
positive step.
Jason Bentley, the DJ for KCRW’s “Metropolis,”
said the time has come for promoters and young people to take
responsibility for their actions and for the reputation raves have
acquired.
“Part of what makes a rave a rave is the nature of it
being illegal and underground,” Bentley said. Holding
promoters more responsible for what happens at their events
“is a process we have to go through if the scene has any
future,” he said.
Other fans of electronic music, like Griffin Woodworth, a
graduate student in musicology, worry the legislation will have a
negative impact on the music.
Woodworth acknowledged drug use has been a part of the
development of electronic music, but said legislating music for
that reason is an “unjustifiable leap.”
“Drugs do not make the music, and music does not cause the
drugs,” Woodworth said.
John Lovell of the CNOA, however, said rave promoters pretend
not to know about illicit drug use at their events, but then sell
pacifiers, which are known to be favored by users of ecstasy.
The new bill will force promoters to pay more attention, making
it less likely that kids will get hurt, Lovell said.
The Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the
current drug policy, said legislation would have the opposite
effect.
“Like so many drug war policies intended to do good, it
has the potential to negatively impact the health of the very
children we’re trying to protect,” said Julie
Ruiz-Cierra, associate director of policy for the Drug Policy
Alliance.
According to the CCLE, “harm reduction”
organizations like Dance Safe, which set up tables and voluntarily
provide pill testing at raves, would not be invited to appear at
permitted events. The Southern California chapter of Dance Safe has
already seen a reduction in its invitation to raves in recent
months, according to spokesman Andy Brunker.
“People are afraid of us even just passing out
information, afraid that will be misconstrued,” he said.
Drug use is prevalent at other music events, so the current bill
might not be the only effort at curbing illegal drug use,
Havice’s office said.
When asked if they will be drawing up similar legislation in the
future to target other music, like reggae and hip-hop, Benilla
acknowledged the possibility.
“We could,” he said.