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Crashing the Party
by
Geov Parrish
Dissident
Voice
November 13, 2003
First Published in Eat
the State!
Hollywood
has a long tradition of films in which the ridiculous plot serves only as the
flimsy excuse for the soundtrack. And so it was that even twenty years ago, the
1984 movie "Footloose" featured an idiotic plot in which the parents
of a high school rebel (a young Kevin Bacon) move to a Utah town and Bacon
discovers that it has outlawed -- can you believe it? -- dancing.
Fast
forward twenty years. To virtually no attention, this year Congress passed an
onerous new anti-drug bill -- one whose explicit effect is to outlaw certain
types of dancing.
Welcome
to the RAVE Act.
Passed
last March, when, two days before the vote, Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden
attached it as a rider to a inevitably successful bill establishing a national
warning system for child abductions, RAVE takes its place in the discouraging
new tradition of ridiculous legislative acronyms: the Reducing Americans'
Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act. (The bill it passed within was the PROTECT Act,
with its own tortured acronym.)
And
how, you might ask, is Big Bro' helping protect us vulnerable Americans from
this demon high?
From
RAVE's text: it is now illegal to "manage or control any place, whether
permanently or temporarily, either as an owner, lessee, agent, employee,
occupant, or mortgagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, profit
from, or make available for use, with or without compensation, the place for
the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a
controlled substance."
The
idea is to hold concert promoters, hall owners, even stage managers liable for
any illicit drug use on the premises. If someone throws a rave, three thousand
kids show up, and one is pulled over when leaving and found to have contraband
in his back pocket, not only is he in deep caca, but the promoter could face
felony charges, 20 years in prison, and a quarter-million in fines. But profit
isn't necessary; if you throw a party and your neighbor calls in a complaint
about your loud music, you could face the same.
Last
year, when RAVE was first introduced, its criminal provisions specifically
targeted raves, arousing enormous opposition -- so much so that Senate
Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy withdrew his co-sponsorship of the bill. But
in the re-introduced version that became law, the word "rave" never
appears. Instead, RAVE was slipped in as an amendment to laws governing crack
houses.
The
intentionally vague and overbroad language is part of what's helping the RAVE
Act work -- in the short term. It allows prosecutors and the Drug Enforcement
Agency broad latitude in deciding who to go after and how harshly to do it;
that, in turn, is scaring off prospective promoters and event insurers.
Already, the horror stories are accumulating.
The
DEA's enforcement priorities under RAVE are likely to mirror a now-notorious
case in New Orleans, wherein the State Palace Theatre -- which had hosted
approximately 50 raves -- had a strict no-tolerance anti-drug policy, with
extensive security, posting of numerous signs, and so on.
Nonetheless,
DEA agents managed to make drug purchases at "four or five" of the
events. Half the purchases tested positive for banned substances (and the other
half, buyer beware, didn't). But rather than going after the sellers, the DEA
is going after the theatre's owner himself, a local businessman with no
criminal history.
Or
consider the Billings saga. On May 30, a DEA agent showed up at the Eagle Lodge
in Billings, Montana, where a benefit concert for local anti-drug groups was to
be held that night. According to the lodge's manager, the agent literally waved
a copy of the RAVE Act in the air while threatening the lodge if anyone was
found with a joint at the concert. The lodge reluctantly cancelled the show.
The
Billings case highlights another undercurrent of RAVE -- its selective use, and
potential for political use against opponents of drug policy. If bands,
promoters, or sponsoring organizations are on record opposing laws -- Hempfest
comes to mind -- the Billings incident suggests that the DEA will use RAVE to
oppose free speech as well as drugs.
Biden's
sponsorship underscores that the War on Drugs is a bipartisan affair, and why
not? Long before 9/11, the Drug War was the wedge with which government at all
levels has passed laws that expand the power of, uh, government. (When was the
last time government passed a law reducing the power of government?) And so it
is that laws like RAVE venture into territory having little to do with drug use
itself.
Setting
aside the question of whether drugs like MDMA (ecstacy) should be illegal in
the first place, the net effect of RAVE isn't to lessen their usage -- it's to
shut down public concerts, inevitably of shows whose music (and fans)
legislators have little interest in. RAVE is a tacit admission of the drug
war's failure; by going after owners or promoters who may well be anti-drug
themselves, it's an admission that people determined to use illicit substances
are not themselves being deterred by the existing draconian laws.
That
being the case, if fear of RAVE becomes a serious impediment to the hosting of
events where drug use takes place -- which is most any concert, when you get
down to it -- the drug use will still take place elsewhere. People will find a
way.
Only
the dancing will be shut down.
Geov
Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for
the Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! This article first
appeared in Eat The State!
Other Recent Articles by Geov Parrish
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