RAVE FEVER

Raves Are All The Rage, But Drugs Are Casting A Pall Over Their Sunny
Peace-And-Love Ethos

It's 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday night, and Amanda Mondoux is just hitting her
party stride. All smiles and a swirl of flapping clothes and damp ponytail,
the 17-year-old is swaying like someone in a voodoo trance, brandishing
glow sticks to carve arcs of light through the shooting lasers. Amanda, a
Grade 12 student, is among some 7,500 young people -- a motley crowd
dressed in brightly coloured "fun" fur, pants that hang like sacks and
baseball caps -- gathered to dance till morning in a cavernous Toronto
exhibition hall. The sea of grinning faces and flailing arms bobs in sync
with the jackhammer beats. Door-sized speakers pump out music so loud that
it registers more through the soles of the feet than the numbed eardrums.

Hours later, awash in glitter makeup and sweat, Amanda visits the "chill"
section, a rest area just quiet enough for conversation. She and the other
young people greet old friends and make new ones. Modern-day flower
children, the kids exchange not just nods and handshakes but also hugs,
kisses, massages, glow-in-the-dark toys, bracelets and candy. Then, in a
corner of the women's washroom, Amanda introduces herself to a chubby
15-year-old girl named Max.

"Hey, what's up?" says Amanda. "How long you been partying?"

"It's my second party," Max replies, adding, "I had to sneak out of a
window. My mom thinks I'm still home."

"No way! For real?" Amanda groans and gives her another hug. They exchange
e-mail addresses.

It all seems sweetly mischievous. But then Amanda asks, "Are you dosing?"
- -- rave-speak for "Have you taken drugs?" -- which draws a nod from Max.

That many kids like Amanda and Max dose is the foremost concern of parents,
police and legislators now that raves are an entrenched -- and growing --
part of youth culture. With the increased popularity of the all-night
parties has come increased consumption of rave drugs, most notably the
amphetamine-like substance MDMA, known as ecstasy or "E". Their use is by
no means confined to raves -- those stimulants can be found at concerts,
nightclubs and many private parties. But wherever they are taken, they can
be deadly. Ecstasy has been implicated in at least 14 Canadian deaths in
the past two years -- 10 in Ontario, three in British Columbia and one in
Halifax. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 43, but most were in their
20s. One of the latest was 21-year-old Allan Ho, a business student at
Toronto's Ryerson Polytechnic University, who collapsed at a rave in a
former shoe factory last Oct. 10. Traces of MDMA were found in his body. A
coroner's inquest into his death beginning on May 3 will look at overall
safety issues surrounding raves.

Many more kids have become sick from rave drugs. Earlier this month in
Edmonton, at a rave at Northlands Sportex attended by more than 5,000
people, eight partyers suffered seizures and had to be taken to hospital.

Because of the drugs, because of the inherently worrisome aspect of kids
staying up all night, far from parental scrutiny, "rave" has become one of
those red-flag words. "Oh, my God, I worry to death what goes on at those
things," says 44-year-old Janet Cacchioni, a marketing co-ordinator in
Vancouver whose 18-year-old daughter, Holly, goes to raves. "I know all the
trouble I got into at her age, but I also know that nothing could have
stopped me -- and I expect nothing will stop her."

Like the rock festivals of the Sixties and Seventies, raves are one-off
celebrations of youthful exuberance, gatherings of the idealistic tribe.
They draw anywhere from hundreds to thousands, most between the ages of 15
and 29, to party to electronic music played and sometimes created by DJs
using synthesizers and turntables. Much like their hippie predecessors,
ravers preach peace, love and unity, and eschew violence. Unlike the
counterculturists of yore, they frown on alcohol. "You can develop a sense
of community," observes 26-year-old Will Chang, a corporate lawyer in a
downtown Toronto law firm who's been going at least once a month for the
past four years. Chang, also a founding member of the Toronto Dance Safety
Committee, which helped set up protocols for the safe operation of raves,
says they "have made me more open-minded and accepting of others -- no one
cares about colour, sex or age."

Some ravers, however, believe the scene is losing its joy and innocence.
They cite commercialization, profiteering venue owners creating unsafe
conditions, and the gangs that have taken control of rave drugs, adding
more lethal substances to the psychedelic menu. "There's no vibe anymore,"
complains Matt Whalley, a 20-year-old Toronto DJ, referring to a sense of
positive energy and goodwill. "I remember a time when I'd go there and just
feel happy -- no drugs, just the music, and everybody was happy."

In trouble or not, raves are common in major cities across the nation.
There are parties almost every Saturday in Toronto, considered by many
devotees to be the rave capital of North America. Last Halloween, in the
largest rave ever in Canada, about 16,000 gathered at a Toronto
entertainment complex. Those events attract people from as far away as
Wisconsin and New York City. Meanwhile, ravers can dance till dawn most
weekends in the Vancouver area, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Halifax,
and less often in smaller locales. Yet the events still draw only a tiny
fraction of young Canadians. A recent Angus Reid survey into youth trends
and values found that five per cent of 3,500 subjects aged 16 to 29 had
attended one or more raves in the past year, and only one per cent went to
them on a regular basis. Applied to the overall population, those findings
mean roughly 50,000 Canadians are committed ravers.

The numbers are substantial enough, however, for raves to be the focus of
big business, both legitimate and illicit. With tickets running from $25 to
$50, rave organizers stand to net -- or lose -- as much as $40,000 from one
event alone. Raves have also spawned numerous spinoff enterprises,
including shops specializing in rave music and garb.

Trafficking in ecstasy and other rave drugs, meanwhile, has become a
virtual epidemic. By no means are all those pills, vials and capsules being
consumed at raves, but their association with the all-night parties -- and
the deaths -- have made raves a hot-button issue in municipal politics
across the country. Vancouver and Toronto have both struck committees to
help regulate raves, and Calgary is considering doing the same. Toronto
raves must now adhere to safety protocols and guidelines pertaining to
water, security and numbers, though they are difficult to enforce.

"In many ways, the concerns raised over the rave scene are not that much
different than for rock concerts in the 1970s," says Edward Adlaf, a
research scientist at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health in Toronto.
Adlaf maintains it's a myth that everyone who attends raves is heavily into
hard drugs, citing his organization's ongoing study of drug use in middle-
and high-school students, which found that 57 per cent of students who had
attended a rave in the past year had used cannabis but no other illegal
substance. But two-thirds of those who had been to a rave are heavier drug
users than non-ravers. And 4.4 per cent of all the students surveyed had
taken ecstasy in the past year. He does concede, however, that the study,
based on voluntary disclosure, comes with a degree of underreporting.

Meanwhile, 30 per cent of the students in Adlaf's study had had one
heavy-drinking episode in the past four weeks alone. And he notes that
young people are far more likely to cause themselves short-or long-term
harm with the much more pervasive drugs tobacco and alcohol. Despite the
far greater risks involved with alcohol abuse, Adlaf is nonetheless very
concerned about ravers buying drugs increasingly cut with poisonous
chemicals, or mixing substances to create a lethal dose. He also notes that
illegal crowding and a lack of running water at many raves puts kids at
risk. Water, experts say, is crucial. Without it, a person cannot control
the body heat generated by rave drugs and dancing, and the liver and
kidneys can shut down. Until recently in Toronto, some landlords who had
maintained the right to sell water would cut off the water supply and
air-conditioning in order to maximize sales.

Informed kids like Amanda make sure to drink constantly, convinced that it
will protect them. "And I only do E," she says, taking a break from playing
with her tongue stud. "I don't touch any of the dirty stuff." She's
referring to drugs like gamma hydroxy-butyric acid (also known as GHB), one
of the so-called date-rape drugs, and Ketamine, an animal tranquillizer
known as "Special K." Highly addictive crystal methamphetamine, a type of
speed also called "ice," has also become popular. With such drugs, the trip
from euphoria to overdose can be swift -- especially when kids combine
substances, as they often do. "I don't like the e-tards," says 18-year-old
Chris Pettitt as he drags on a marijuana joint and points to some kids
lying on the floor. "They're the people who take too much drugs and act
stupid." Says an indignant Amanda: "People have offered me Special K, and
I'm like, 'Cat tranquillizers? Do I look like a cat to you? No way.' "

Those dangers aside, ravers protest that their culture is about the music
and the love-fest factor, not drugs. "I found a family at raves," says
Becky, a 19-year-old Toronto student who attended her first one in 1994.
Taken into foster care at age 12, she says she kept going because of the
accepting environment. But for a few years, Becky took ecstasy every other
week, and she still indulges every couple of months. "I respect myself and
my body," she says, "but everybody does something that's bad for them."

Given the rave-drug equation, many parents simply forbid their children
from going. Others -- baby boomers who remember the excesses of the Sixties
and Seventies -- believe it's pointless to try to deny young people their
own tribal celebrations, or even their own drugs. Rebecca Ientile started
to accompany her three children (Chris, 20, Kathleen, 17, and Ashley, 15)
to raves five months ago. "At least I know where my kids are," says the
43-year-old Toronto single mother, who owns a landscaping company. "I know
what they do and what they're on. We've sat down as a family and discussed
it. As long as everything is in moderation and we're open about it, I'm not
worried." Ientile is quick to point out raves' positive aspects. "The kids
are wonderful. There's never any fights or bullying. Everyone's friendly
and respectful of one another."

Rose Ker, a federal civil servant, sometimes accompanies daughter Danielle,
17, to raves, where the teen and her best friend, Meghan Shepherd, have for
the past two years operated a booth selling jewelry, toys and clothing they
make themselves. "I was amazed," the 40-year-old mother says of her first
rave experience. "Usually kids can be so judgmental and cruel to each
other, but there was none of that. There seemed no barriers. It reminded me
of the hippie age."

Many ravers savour the self-expression that is central to the culture.
So-called candy ravers cultivate a childlike look, dressing in bright
colours and big hats and decking themselves with toys and candy. "Liquid
kids" wear white gloves and move in a fluid, mime-like fashion. Dancing at
raves is less regimented than at clubs: people tend not to pair off as they
move in quirky, even comical, ways. The clothes tend to be fun and
comfortable rather than sexually provocative.

Sociologist Tim Weber, who authored a 1999 study on raves for Toronto's
Centre for Addiction & Mental Health, notes that today's teens are looking
for positive experiences to offset the comparatively stressful climate
they've grown up in. "I was surprised at the number of kids in high school
who saw raves as mini-vacations away from daily stressors," says Weber, who
is now working for the pollster Angus Reid. "Some enjoyed being allowed to
act like small children, doing things like wearing costumes, eating candy
and playing with toys." Raised by done-it-all, seen-it-all boomers, they
are also the generation that grew up with latchkey-ism, AIDS, the dominance
of clothing brands and the pressure to start planning a career during
adolescence. Jessica Hafekost, a 19-year-old Toronto salesclerk, says of
the first rave party she and a friend attended four years ago: "We walked
in and saw people dressed and just moving in ways we'd never seen before.
There was a bubble machine, toys and tubing on the ceiling filled with
luminescent green goo -- a fantasy quality to the whole thing. Where else
are you going to see that?"

Shawn Parsons, now 33, has worked in security since he was 15, first in
clubland, and since 1993, at raves with his own security company. "At a bar
on any given night, you can guarantee a member of my staff will be
physically attacked," says the burly Toronto father of three preteen
children. "With ravers, that just doesn't happen. The parties attract the
same group of people as they always have: intelligent, respectful kids who
feel like outsiders in the real world."

Often, raves get an undeservedly bad rap because of confusion over what
they are. A Vancouver shooting in early February, reported to be at a rave,
in fact occurred outside a Chinese new year party at a banquet hall, and
was gang-related. "What you're seeing is a knee-jerk reaction where they're
calling everything a rave," says Sgt. Steve Clark, in charge of downtown
special events for Toronto police. Meanwhile, conventional nightclubs don't
necessarily fare any better in terms of safety. Last year, the
1,800-capacity Toronto club The Guvernment was the source of 37 emergency
calls on Friday and Saturday nights -- 24 medical problems, seven acts of
violence and six accidental overdoses. At the Toronto rave attended by
16,000 last Halloween, there was just one emergency call when a table fell
on a person's leg.

At 7:30 a.m., Amanda is waiting for friends at the coat check as orange
sunlight filters into the hall. The music is still loud, but most of the
few hundred kids remaining have put on their coats and are dancing their
way across the trash-strewn floor towards the exit. Amanda and her pals are
about to go to one of their houses to talk or listen to music as they come
down off the drugs. Soon, there will be another rave, another all-nighter.
"I won't become a bum and do this when I get old, like 26," she shrugs.
"But for now this is what it's about."

An inquiry into the agony of ecstasy

Kieran Kelly's death got the most headlines, but Allan Ho's is considered
the most typical. Both of the 21-year-old Ontarians had been to raves, and
both had taken the drug ecstasy. The bookish Kelly, a native of Brampton,
disappeared last summer from an outdoor rave held near Sauble Beach, a
popular Lake Huron holiday spot 250 km northwest of Toronto. For a month,
his anguished father carried on a highly publicized search -- until Kelly's
body was finally found in dense bush almost two kilometres from the rave
site. Ho, a business student at Ryerson Polytechnic University, collapsed
at a Toronto rave in a former shoe factory last October. Rushed to
hospital, he lay unconscious for 14 hours, and then died.

The two deaths added to the provincial coroner's growing file on
ecstasy-related deaths. By the end of 1999, the toll in Ontario, home to
more raves than any other province, had reached nine for the year (with
just one other in the rest of Canada). That number marked the sudden
emergence of a new way of dying -- in 1998 Ontario had recorded only one
ecstasy-related death, its first ever -- and prompted the coroner's office
to call an inquest, scheduled to begin in Toronto on May 3. The inquest
will focus on Ho, because the coroner considers him the most representative
of the nine Ontario cases: all were healthy males between 19 and 28, and
most died at raves in the Toronto area. But the inquest will also look at
the entire urban rave scene and its dangers.

Adding to deputy chief coroner Jim Cairns's sense of urgency is the fact
that two more such deaths have already been confirmed in 2000 and others
suspected, putting the province on track to match or exceed last year's
total. "Look, I know this is not the most dangerous thing going on," Cairns
allows. "Many more young people die from alcohol every year. But it is new,
it's continuing, and we need to collect what we know and make it public."

That means Ho's inquest will have "a broad mandate," Cairns says. "It will
examine not just his death, but the larger questions about ecstasy, by
hearing testimony from police about the problems they deal with, and from
medical professionals about what they see in emergency wards on weekends."
It's an exercise in public health and safety that Cairns hopes will help
keep others from the fate of Kieran Kelly and Allan Ho.

Wild ones through the ages

Some of the youth movements that have captivated kids -- and, in most
cases, scandalized parents -- over the past 80 years:

FLAPPERS 1920S

Music: Dixieland

Look: short, bobbed hair and slim-cut dresses for women, fedoras for men

Drug of choice: alcohol and roll-your-own cigarettes

Ritual: dance-hall parties and the Charleston

SWING KIDS 1940S

Music: big-band jazz

Look: sleekly coiffed hairdos, fitted blouses and skirts for women, pleated
trousers and sports jackets, or the clean-cut GI Joe look for men

Drug of choice: alcohol and cigarettes

Ritual: music-hall parties and cutting a rug with the jive and the jitterbug

ROCK 'N' ROLLERS 1950S

Music: Elvis Presley and other early rockers, Paul Anka

Look: bouffant hairdos and bobby socks for women, greasy ducktails and
white T-shirts for men

Drug of choice: alcohol and cigarettes

Ritual: parties in darkened rec rooms, group excursions to drive-ins and
pool halls, high-school dances

HIPPIES 1960S

Music: folk and acid rock, the Beatles

Look: tie-dyed garments, ethnic wear, jeans, bell-bottoms, miniskirts

Drug of choice: just about every legal and illegal mind-altering drug
going, especially cannabis, LSD and alcohol

Ritual: love-ins, happenings, rock concerts and festivals

DISCO DIEHARDS 1970S

Music: mindless dance music

Look: platform shoes, loud shirts, big collars, halter tops and hot pants

Drug of choice: cannabis, cocaine, heroin, alcohol

Ritual: dancing till you dropped at discotheques

PUNKERS LATE-1970S TO MID-1980S

Music: the Sex Pistols and other punk rock

Look: safety pins, mohawks, studded leather

Drug of choice: cannabis, heroin, speed, alcohol

Ritual: concerts and mosh pits

HIP-HOP KIDS 1980S TO THE PRESENT

Music: rap music

Look: extremely baggy sportswear, sometimes worn backwards

Drug of choice: cannabis, crack

Ritual: parties, concerts