SAFE TO RAVE?

Putting a Price on Partying: With bigger raves, younger ravers and more
drugs, Vancouver wants to regulate the tribal stomps. But will that kill
their spirit?

The music begins with a steady thump, thump, thump. It's a beat and a sound
that goes on with unrelenting monotony for eight hours straight at the
Plaza of Nations.

Welcome to The Rave.

The room is filled with about 3,000 jostling kids of varying ages and
costumes. Kids sucking soothers, kids wearing candy necklaces and silver
sparkles on their cheeks, kids wearing cute little tops. On the dance
floor, glow sticks whirr like insects in the night.

Sergeant Tony Zanatta, one of eight Vancouver police officers charged with
keeping the peace here, sizes up the crowd. His eyes continually scan the
room. He is tense. There could be trouble tonight. He can't quite put his
finger on it, but this rave feels different from the last one.

He doesn't much enjoy these things. The music gets to you after a while.
``I just want to be home and asleep,'' he says, smiling. ``I don't
remember being 17. I don't remember having that kind of energy.''

In a room tucked away behind the dance floor, a girl sits next to a
first-aid attendant, spaced out on drugs.

Now what was it this time? Ecstasy, GHB, DXM, ephedrine, Quaalude? Police
say a mind-boggling menu of chemical cocktails are turning up at these
all-night, high-decibel dancefests.

``We're seeing [a variety and combination of ] drugs we have not seen in 10
years,'' said Corporal Scott Rintoul, who works in the RCMP drug-awareness
program in Vancouver. ``It's alarming us.''

He has spent the past year and a half conducting an intelligence probe on
raves, an investigation that has taken him to 25 of these events himself.

``The scene is getting bigger,'' he said. Where once there was only one
rave per weekend in the Lower Mainland, there are now two or three, he
said. And where police discovered eight labs producing illicit drugs last
year, they have come across 17 this year.

``Some of the gangs are going to these,'' he said, mentioning Asian and the
Hells Angels motorcycle gangs as two examples.

A rave called Summer Love which drew 7,500 people to Chilliwack this
September is widely seen as a turning point in the scene. Suddenly, people
recognized that raves were big and getting bigger. ``The growth of this
industry exploded in September,'' said Scott Blessin, co-owner of ER Plus
and Sensor Security, businesses that provide first aid and security for
raves. His firm also noticed a real increase at that event in the number of
people who felt ill from drugs.

Rintoul has noticed another trend that is troubling, given that drugs seems
to be a key ingredient in the churning broth at a rave. The age is going
down, he noted, with kids as young as 16 popping in for a night of frantic
fun.

Rave promoters like David Primack admit the drugs are there and that they
are dangerous, but they point out that drugs are everywhere.

``It's a societal problem, not a rave problem,'' he said, adding it would
be absurd to ban raves because of them. Instead, he thinks there should be
a massive drug-prevention campaign.

Raves grow up

The rave scene has set off alarm bells in city halls where municipal
authorities are trying to figure out what to do about these bashes that
gather as many as 7,000 kids in one place, with all the attendant problems
of noise, traffic congestion, crowd control, inadequate fire exits, not to
mention the big concern -- drugs.

While New Westminster has banned raves, Richmond is weighing its options
now that it has reached the end of a six-month observation period and
Vancouver city council has just decided to provide a bureaucratic framework
to handle them.

So just what is it, this party animal known as a rave that has municipal
governments and police forces so concerned?

If you overlook what is going on in the corners and some of the strange
embellishments, there are moments when it looks as innocuous as a cross
between a Hallowe'en party and a high-school dance.

Having grown out of Britain in the early 1980s, largely out of the gay
community there, raves have rippled across Europe and through the United
States. A few characteristics are common to most raves: they start at
around midnight and go to 8 a.m. and they feature non-stop dancing to the
music of disc jockeys rather than live bands. They're food-free and alcohol
is largely eschewed, but bottled water is sold at inflated prices.

Some have eschewed the term raves, saying party would be more apt. ``By the
way, don't say raves,'' one participant cautioned this reporter. ``Raves is
just a whack word.''

Whatever their name, they are big parties and big business, with kids
paying $20 to $50 a ticket and promoters, light and sound specialists, disc
jockeys and private first-aid and security firms cashing in on the bonanza.
On the sidelines at a rave are a new breed of young free enterprisers
offering everything from massages to body painting. An entire industry is
growing up around the rave.

Now held in big, established venues, they've come a long way from what
began as impromptu gatherings held in warehouses.

But a common theme emerged during the intense debate over the matter at
Vancouver city council: there is nothing intrinsically wrong with kids
having fun. And ravegoers, like most kids, feel they have been
misunderstood.

Too young for clubs

The Vancouver Sun visited a rave from midnight to 8 a.m. Sunday morning,
where kids tried to explain their love of not just the event, but of a rave
subculture.

With startling frankness, 19-year-old Keeran Tehdehan described without
hesitation the joys of taking a form of speed known as Ecstasy, or ``E'' as
it is called, which police say is present in roughly half of the illicit
drugs taken at raves.

``It's like a complete rush, like an orgasm,'' he said, then carefully
spelled his name for the reporter. That's T-e-h-d-e-h-a-n.

And, yes, he planned to take a little something before the star disc jockey
came on.

In the minutes leading up to the big event, Lea Baxter, 17, stands in the
lobby, her hair sprouting pigtails, her eyelids dripping silver shadow.

She searches for words to describe the magic. ``Ravers call it the vibe,''
she said. ``It's happiness and energy.''

It's a world in which everyone seems to have a label, based on what they
are wearing. There are candy ravers (candy necklaces and bracelets), jungle
kids (ties and dress shirts), drum and base kids (caps pulled down low on
their foreheads) and, lower in the social order, the bar stars (leather
clothes combined with alcohol consumption.)

One of the most jarring scenes is grown boys sucking soothers. One of them
explained that the soothers are needed because drug speed causes you to
grind your teeth. Then there are just seemingly ordinary people like Tania
Daudet, an 18-year-old White Spot waitress, and her friend Brandi Reano.

Looking as straight and sweet as the girl next door, they saved up for the
$46 ticket and came over from the North Shore for the big night.

``It's people meeting new people,'' said Daudet, who adds she has no
problem partying without drugs or alcohol.

She is also here because there are few places for teenagers to go. ``We're
too young to go to a club. There is nothing to do when you are 18.''

They like the rave scene because it brings so many nationalities together
with no violence, an assessment with which police largely concur.

The only problem, according to Rintoul, is that so many of these nouveau
hippies are on drugs. Three drug-related deaths in raves in Toronto and
one, last March, in New Westminster are part of the stark evidence. Police
have given up trying to charge kids with drug-related offences at these
events.

``It's not cost-effective to go after kids at raves,'' Rintoul said.
``We're so short budget-wise.'' Far better, he says, to go after the
clandestine labs.