RAVES SAFER THAN ALTERNATIVES

We Should Be Grateful Teens Are Going To Raves, Despite The
Drugs

Dear Peter and Terry: There has been a lot of coverage of the rave
scene, with promoters caught with large quantities of ecstasy and other
drugs for presumed sale to minors at the raves they are promoting.

Kids have always needed to have some place to get away from their
parents, where they can be with their friends and party. Dancing is
not a crime; partying is not a crime; being young is not a crime.
Buying and using alcohol and ecstasy at a rave obviously is. Whether
morally right or wrong, that is still the law.

Rave promoters who deal in drugs or knowingly allow drugs to be dealt
in their venues should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Most ravers are young teens and hence even more vulnerable to peer
pressure than their more experienced brethren.

Promoters must be made to follow a code of conduct: minimum levels of
supervision (paid for by the promoters), strict drug/alcohol/health
regulation, posting of a monetary bond to cover the cost of
damage/legal costs incurred during the rave, some visible police
presence at the beginning and the end of the function.

Basically I want the kids to be able to party, but in a reasonably
safe environment. What's your slant on all this? -

Johnny,
Halifax

Terry's comments:

As someone who has worked with young people who have struggled with
addiction, I have seen first hand the devastating effects of drug
abuse on their lives. Your concerns are valid in that during the rave
there would be considerable peer pressure to join the ranks of other
drug users. And consequently, some will develop addictions.

We can all accept the fact that youth will continue to rebel against
the established, conservative views of their elders. Even Aristotle
groaned about the unfortunate state of the youth of his day. It is
unlikely, however, that we will ever curb youth rebellion
successfully, nor should we wish to. Young people need to assert
themselves in order to discover who they are. It would appear that
raves are the current popular choice of personal expression and
generational rebellion.

Nevertheless, we do have a social responsibility to the younger
generation to provide them with the safest possible environments in
which to express their rebellious natures.

Hence, it is encouraging to see the efforts of local police and
council, reacting with civic responsibility and obvious concern for
Halifax's young citizens. It is unlikely that council will solve all
the problems associated with the rave movement, nor will parental
concerns be entirely alleviated.

But as parents, we will feel a little more secure sending our children
into this social scene knowing that they can make the choice to go
into a regulated, safer rave environment, rather than an unregulated,
potentially dangerous one. At present, our young people do not have
the option of a choice.

Peter's comments:

I beg to differ. There is little evidence that raves are dangerous.
Raves are a form of entertainment relatively less dangerous than
skiing, hunting, car driving, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol,
etc. This, of course, is to judge raves relatively or comparatively.
I'm not saying that they are absolutely safe.

The problem is that life always involves risk. My point is that when
we make the relevant comparisons to other forms of entertainment, we
should be grateful that the kids are going to raves.

The fact that a young person died at one rave may seem to constitute
an emergency, but before we expend energy on the problem and decide to
make rules and restrict young people, we must compare raves with the
other activities which go on in our society - such as drinking while
driving and violent crime, activities in which many people are
needlessly killed. These are the places where we should focus our attention.

In general, if we fail to compare real risks, then it is easy to see
anything as bad, particularly if it is strange or, perhaps, not to our
taste. Raves are a case in point.

In fact, just such unfair non-comparative judgments are at the root of
many other forms of prejudice - against blacks, against marijuana,
against homosexuality, etc. Compare using marijuana, for instance,
with eating a lot of sugar, or drinking alcohol - both are more harmful.

The philosophical point is that learning to judge in a fair,
comparative way is one of the keys to building a free and liberal society.