Press Clips by jason vest

RAVING LUNATICS

It would be nice to think that, after mass-murder coverage that put
youth culture through the wringer, local news outlets might refrain
from lurid reporting that harks back to Reefer Madness. But, carrying
on in the grand tradition of William Randolph Hearst ("MARIJUANA MAKES
FIENDS OF BOYS IN 30 DAYS"), WTTG-5, Washington's Fox News affiliate,
presented a report last Wednesday night about "the underground of
raves," rife with "pulsating music, illegal drugs, even sex."
Declining to provide any historical context about young-adult drug
use-- such as the fact that, since the 1920s, teens have played with
everything from liquor to pot to coke to psychedelics to whippets,
etc., yet the Republic is still intact-- the report relied largely on
snuff-film grade hidden-camera footage and a matter-of-fact but
righteously indignant voiceover from reporter Elisabeth Leamy. Her
"revelations" about a drug that lends itself to a cool sensory
experience were punctuated by images sure to inspire horror in the
hearts of suburban parents everywhere: teens blissfully stroking each
other's faces and shoulders, grinding teeth on pacifiers, and
badgering bartenders for water.

The most arresting revelation of the "investigation," however, came
when the camera lens was trained on security personnel: off-duty D.C.
cops who, Leamy noted, "have full arrest powers even when they're off
duty," Yet (as the footage showed) they steadfastly decline to take
action against Ecstasy-popping ravers.

And this, Leamy later intoned, "even though [Ecstasy] has killed at
least 10 people nationwide." Tempting as it is to point out that more
people died from lightning strikes last year (OK, we yield to the
temptation), what Press Clips found most appalling was that a key
contextual fact was left out until the postreport anchor-reporter
chitchat: In the District of Columbia, Ecstasy isn't illegal.

Due to a nearly 10-year-old typo in D.C. law, cops have no legal
authority or obligation to arrest X users.

But no matter; suburbanites living outside the Capital of the Free
World will now sleep better knowing that, in a city coping with poorly
trained, trigger-happy cops to negligent care for the mentally
incapacitated to a street-drug problem exacerbated by the lack of
treatment programs, Fox 5 brought down "the rave underground."