POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

Check out these drug-information cards at your next rave - It might save
your life

Attend an all-night dance event and there's a good chance that somewhere
between the DJ on stage and the glowstick booth you will find folks at a
table providing sensible pamphlets on drug harm-reduction. Similar to
safe-sex educators, their purpose is to reduce potential harm by educating
people about the risks of illicit drug use, smoking and drinking.

Recently, some of those pamphlets have taken on a whole new look.

Twelve slick postcards covering everything from ecstasy to alcohol are
being scooped up en masse at, clubs, raves and late-night dance parties.

The cards are from DanceSafe, a U.S. based harm-reduction organization with
chapters in Calgary and Vancouver. They are also being distributed by other
harm-reduction groups such as the Toronto Raver Information Project.

The cards feature the name of the drug on the front and detailed
information on the back about effects and side effects. Each card states
that: "DanceSafe neither condones or condemns the use of any drug. Rather,
we attempt to reduce drug-related harm by providing health and safety
information to those who use. No drug use is completely safe. All drugs
contain inherent risks."

Theo Rosenfeld, 22, is the founder of the Vancouver chapter of DanceSafe
and currently lives in California where he works for DanceSafe's national
office in Oakland. "The idea behind the cards was basic marketing," he
says. "The people we wanted to target are already using those drugs. We
wanted to make it culturally relevant to those in subcultures using those
drugs. Flyers are the biggest media form in the rave community so we wanted
to make them look like a flyer."

There have been charges that by making the cards so attractive, they
actually encourage the use of drugs, "but there's no correlation between
people reading about drugs and going out and trying them," says Rosenfeld.
"Drug education has a history of magnifying the negative. There's an idea
that if it scares all the kids they won't use the drugs. But fear-based
education doesn't work. We make the cards look flashy and pretty so they
want to read them so they can make wiser choices next time."

However, says Corporal Scott Rintoul of RCMP Drug Awareness Service in
Vancouver, "I don't think they've gone far enough.

"These drugs are psychologically addictive. That point has to get
mentioned. A psychological dependency is worse than a physical dependency."

Rintoul, who has been monitoring DanceSafe for two years, says he doesn't
like the "use-drugs-safely" message, but admits that nothing else is being
done within the dance scene other than random law enforcement. "At least
they are doing something," he says.

Most harm-reduction groups say they are made to feel very welcome at dance
events.

"We thought we were going to have a problem with venues owned by the city
of Calgary," says Allan Domes of DanceSafe Calgary. "But once we met with
them they were comfortable with our presence and the information we were
handing out."

In Calgary, not all 12 of the postcards get distributed. Domes says. For
example, 2C-B, a psychedelic, hasn't surfaced in Calgary's dance scene.

"What you want to do with people who are using is to get them to think
about what they are using and you want them to be informed users," says
Stephen Meredith, a program consultant at the Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. "It's a start if they read this card."

Meredith says much of the information found on these cards is similar to
CAMH brochures; the difference is that CAMH pamphlets are aimed at health
workers and do not have the visual sizzle of the DanceSafe cards.

His one criticism of the postcards was the lack of information on how to
reduce harm once a person is on a drug.

"The most important thing we know -- and it's validated in the research --
is you have to give accurate, objective information with no tone one way or
the other," says Andrea Stevens Lavigne, a regional director at CAMH, who
feels the DanceSafe cards do not encourage more drug use. "With these kind
of things, if they're using [drugs] in a club setting or in a group where
you know that you already got users, it's not an issue of whether you're
tempting them to use more. We know they are trying things anyways,
regardless of what we tell them. And if they are going to be trying [drugs]
we want them to have the accurate information. We want them to reduce harm."