Banning raves in California won't save lives

Things started to go wrong for me at around midnight on Saturday at EDC Las Vegas. We were stuffed deep into the neonGARDEN for Disclosure. The temperature must have clocked in at around 125F on the floor. As I was deep in the groove with sweat pouring from my brow, I suddenly started to shiver with cold. Common sense and a panicked scan around at the drenched and panting bodies told me that this was not how I was supposed to feel.

I knew immediately that my night was over. I certainly wasn't a gurning mess, but my body was sending me very strong warning signs that it was overheating. I calmly let my friends know, we waded out through the crowd, and headed to the medical tent where I spent the rest of the evening drinking Powerade, chatting to the volunteer staff and reflecting on the situation I had placed myself in.

I don't believe that I was in grave danger that night. But had I not possessed an understanding of the ups and downs of drugs, and a knowledge of the available on-site facilities I might have left that festival as a statistic used to demonize the community that I love.

Insomniac, the promoters of Electric Daisy Carnival, did everything they possibly could to make sure that all those in attendance were safe. The security presence was enormous and approachable, the medical staff was responsive and non-judgmental, and free water was abundant. The festival's positive promo video 'We Are Dance Music', which was released a few days before the event, sought to marshal ravers behind a positive message of community – for example, if someone's struggling, let security know immediately. EDC Las Vegas recorded only one death out of over 420,000 total attendees in 2015. Though many would argue that that is still one too many.

This debate about drug use in dance music is back in the spotlight once more, this time in response to the deaths of 18-year-old Tracey Nguyen and 19-year-old Katie Dix at HARD Summer last weekend. While toxicology reports could take up to six weeks, both deaths have been attributed to complications following ecstasy use. The festival, which was held at the LA County-owned Pomona Fairplex, has come under intense scrutiny in the light of the tragedies. The LA Times ran an opinion piece from local ER doctors calling for "a moratorium on raves on county-owned property", while the deaths immediately prompted a motion fronted by LA County's First District Supervisor Hilda L. Solis to prohibit "these kinds of events". This harks back to the movement that very publicly drove EDC from its home at the LA Coliseum following the death of 15-year-old Sasha Rodriguez in 2010.

But banning raves is not the answer. Many in the industry agree that to further prevent tragedies like this from occurring the festivals need to be feel legally supported to offer on-site "harm reduction" services. But thanks to the controversial and ambiguously defined piece of law known as the R.A.V.E. Act, promoters are understandably apprehensive about the murky legal line that divides prevention and promotion.

After a period of intense media and public scrutiny surrounding illegal rave culture in the late 90s, the US government passed the R.A.V.E. Act (Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act) in 2003. The bill broadened the context of the Crack House Statute (which places legal culpability on those that knowingly permit illicit drug dealing on their premises) to allow for temporary and one-time lease holders (i.e. promoters) to be legally responsible for drug dealing at their parties.

The promoters were immediately spooked and a lot of the clandestine warehouse parties that defined a blossoming period of dance music culture in the US ceased to exist. But when overzealous law enforcement officers started misinterpreting the bill to consider harm reduction services as a sign of drug "promotion", attempts to develop a progressive approach to recreational drug use became extremely difficult.

"When the DEA started going after innocent event producers under the Crack House Law," wrote Insomniac CEO Pasquale Rotella in a Reddit AMA last year, "having [harm reduction groups] at an event was one of the things they looked at to justify putting them in jail for 20 years. Dance culture has had a very challenging past."

And he isn't alone in feeling like this. Promoters, their lawyers and festival insurance providers are extremely hesitant to take the necessary steps to educate their audiences on matters of drug safety. But a closer look at the almost non-existent prosecution rate shows that their fears are largely unfounded.

"We certainly aren't aware of a single promoter that has been charged for offering services like ours," notes Missi Wooldridge, executive director for DanceSafe, a longstanding non-profit organization that promotes a responsible approach to recreational drug use. "There's a lot of misunderstanding about what the bill entails."

The US government has consistently maintained a hard stance of blanket prohibition, staunchly contradicting a growing body of research from Europe that suggests a more cooperative approach to the problem is far more successful.

In the late 80s the Dutch authorities responded to rampant ecstasy use by introducing 'Safe House', a compromise between the government and local promoters, which included innovative drug purity testing and free water, to ensure that the environment was as safe as it feasibly could be. Over a ten-year period in the 80s and 90s Holland's National Institute for Alcohol and Drugs recorded only two official deaths from ecstasy use.

Today Unity is the main Dutch organization that continues the initiatives started by 'Safe House'. Holland has been cited as the source of a recent surge of alarmingly high dosage pills in the UK, and Unity's purity tests form the basis of an alert system that warns relevant media outlets of dangerous pills in circulation.

Despite the UK government's increasingly draconian approach to drug issues, The Warehouse Project in Manchester has also been particularly progressive in its approach to harm reduction. It's employed the services of drug awareness charity The Loop, which is run by Durham University's professor of criminology Fiona Measham, to offer innovative front-of-house testing stations.

"I think harm reduction advice is only useful if people know what drugs they're buying," noted Measham, whose notification to UK clubbers of the deadly red Superman pills late last year brought about widespread awareness of the dangerous adulterant PMMA. "And the very nature of the illegal drug market makes it very difficult to know, and people are dying because of it."

Association For Electronic Music CEO Mark Lawrence explained to Mixmag that America's simplistic view towards 'Molly' (the US street term for capsules of MDMA) was also a problem, given the drug's tendency to be adulterated with scores of other dangerous substances.

"In many of these festival goers' eyes Molly equals pure, and pure equals safe," he explained. "But what we're finding is that what people think is pure MDMA might actually be cut with bath salts or speed or heroin, or any number of other substances. Education and testing empowers people to make informed decisions."

But while hoping for a nationwide embrace of drug testing facilities might be a tad optimistic in the current climate, some feel that if we don't start taking the first steps towards basic education on these issues immediately our scene could be truly at risk.

"Every time there is a death at a festival, there are calls for 'zero tolerance' towards drugs and calls by politicians to ban the festival," said San Jose-based lawyer Cameron Bowman (aka The Festival Lawyer), who is considered the national authority on the R.A.V.E. Act. "The festival responds with more undercover officers, drug dogs etc. but nothing is done to address the underlying safety issues concerning drugs. To keep following failed prohibition policies will ultimately kill the festival scene."

In North America there are a number of non-profit groups in operation that seek to educate the dance music community in harm reduction. Drugpolicy.org, Zendo Project, Maps.org and several more organizations have all been working tirelessly to highlight the success of alternative measures to ensure the safety of drug users, though the resistance to operating openly has certainly inhibited their chances of tangible success.

DanceSafe is perhaps the most well known of these groups. Founded by activist Emanuel Sferios in 1998, they were the first in the United States to introduce the Dutch method of on-site testing to raves and festivals. Over the years their focus has expanded beyond drug testing and education, and their friendly on-site stations now distribute all materials needed for a responsible rinse: earplugs, sunscreen, condoms, free water, electrolytes and welcoming vibes.

But they feel that the dance music community needs to stand united against the current approach and demand alternatives if we hope to continue.

"It's important that we as an industry rally around ideas of harm reduction," notes Wooldridge, "because if everyone is on the same page then no one has to be fearful of prosecution. We need to come up with industry wide standards on how we manage drug use."

As it stands the major festivals are doing everything they can to stop further tragedies from occurring. Most of these events boast an emergency response time of under five minutes (a level of comparative safety you scarcely expect anywhere else in the world), free water stations, air-conditioned chill-out zones, extremely comprehensive security searches, and an army of medical staff well-versed in the dangers of drug overdose procedure.

If HARD and other massive festivals like it could feel supported by the state and the local authorities to openly provide concise and honest information about drugs, and to offer on-site testing to help eliminate the deadly adulterate substances like PMA and PMMA, they could start to change the culture of excess and ignorance at a grassroots level.

So when you consider the media outcry every time someone dies at one of these events, you feel for the promoters. They know that educating their audience about the dangers of drugs would be tremendously beneficial in changing a culture of reckless use, but they run the risk of being shut down, losing their insurance or chased out of the venues by communities terrified of rampant drug orgies.

Of course, whatever promoters and the industry are able or willing to do, we have to take responsibility for our own safety too. No one is invincible and that even pure MDMA is not "safe". No amount of purity testing and hydration can compensate for being excessive or reckless. A lack of respect for the danger of these substances will continue to exist if we don't first engage in open conversation. But until that happens, it's our responsibility not to be negligent of the facts if we're going to indulge.

Quite simply, regardless of how many security measures you put in place people will still find a way to take drugs, and if you don't allow the festivals that attract a young audience to introduce educational measures then we have reached the limit of what can be done to ensure safety. The idea that banning raves will somehow stop people taking drugs goes against thousands of years of human history and is particularly absurd in a country with a huge underground prescription medicine misuse problem and endemic large scale use of highly addictive illegal drugs like methamphetamine. Anyone unwilling to entertain the notion that harm reduction is more beneficial than prohibition is implicitly accepting more young lives cut needlessly short through reckless drug use.

"Banning these events at facilities where we are able to provide first-rate medical care and emergency services is not the answer," noted Rotella in an official statement on Tuesday in response to the proposed ban of raves in LA County. "I hope that policymakers and the media do not turn their backs on a cultural movement that is thriving and brings so much happiness to a generation that, quite frankly, needs an environment where they can feel loved and accepted. Most just want healthy interaction with their peers. I know that if I didn't have access to this community growing up, my life would have taken a much different turn."

So rather than silently oppose the attempt to ban these vital cultural events in Southern California, we need to band together as a scene and an industry to push for a progressive dialogue about making our parties safer. Dance music's future in America could depend on it. And so could lives.

Go here to sign a petition to push for an amendment to the R.A.V.E. act. Find out more about The Loop and DanceSafe