CONGRESS ACTS OUT AGAINST CLUB CULTURE

Think only conservative religious sects outlaw dancing? Think again.
Dancing, or at least clubs that offer dancing to electronic DJ music, could
be in the fast lane to extinction thanks to an act of Congress. Last week
it passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, also known as "the RAVE
Act," as part of the larger PROTECT Act (a.k.a. the "Amber Alert" bill).

The RAVE Act strengthens existing "Operation of a Crackhouse" legislation,
under which owners of a property are held responsible for any drug use on
their premises. Penalties for violating the Crackhouse statute can include
fines of up to $500,000 for an individual or $2 million for a corporation,
a potential 20-year prison sentence and asset forfeiture.

When used against a real crack house, where individuals gather for the
specific purpose of doing drugs, the law makes sense; when applied to music
venues where a determined patron can always find a bathroom stall or dark
corner to imbibe a chemical, it's lunacy.

In two landmark cases, New Orleans' State Palace Theatre, capacity 3,500,
and Florida's Club La Vela, the largest nightclub in the country with a
capacity of 6,000, were prosecuted under the Crackhouse law because,
somewhere in their vast confines, it was charged, people using drugs.

It gets crazier. As evidence in the Club La Vela trial, prosecutors offered
a picture from the club's Web site, depicting a man giving another man a
massage, as proof of drug use -- because, they insisted, only drugs could
incite such abnormal activity. In the Palace Theatre case, prosecutors
cited bottled water and glow sticks as paraphernalia for use of the drug
ecstasy.

The RAVE Act's strengthening of existing legislation and its expansion of
what can be deemed a crack house could have a chilling, even killing,
effect on club culture. As anyone who's gone to 1015 Folsom or other local
dance nightspots lately can attest, an extensive search -- more thorough
than an airport security check -- is now accepted procedure. What more can
conscientious club owners do to protect themselves against the crack house
crackdown? Not much, it seems.

"There's no clause having to do with due diligence, or counter measures you
could take to mitigate liability or culpability," says Gary Blitz, National
Coordinator for the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund (EM:DEF).
"Yet a nightclub can only search people so much without violating their
rights. The government can't even keep drugs out of the federal prison
system, where they do cavity searches."

EM:DEF (emdef.org), the San Francisco Late Night Coalition (sflnc.org) and
other dance activists want to convince Congress to add a safe harbor clause
to the statute, exempting from prosecution those businesses taking
precautions against potential patron drug use. The ACLU is on the case, but
it's an uphill battle.

"We're trying to get everyone within the electronic dance community more
involved and educated, " Blitz says. "So far youth dance culture hasn't
been that political."

Word to club kids: Now would be a good time to start. Take your glow sticks
in hand and fight for your right to party -- before the party's over.