DANCING: THE PILLS, THE POLICING, AND THE PSYCHOLOGY

The club is sweaty and crowded, the lights flash and music pounds. The dance
floor is a church, the DJ is god, and a variety of legal and illegal
recreational drugs are being consumed.

But blaming the drugs achieves nothing and trying to get rid of them - the
zero tolerance solution - only makes things worse, says Mr Gary Fliegner, a
former Victorian police officer with his own security firm.

Mr Fliegner, who works as a crowd controller in some of the largest
Victorian clubs, told the Australasian Conference on Drugs that a
``zero-tolerance, `eradicate the supply of this drug' attitude'' would not
work.

``We know prohibition doesn't work,'' he told the Adelaide conference. ``The
further laws are enforced to eradicate the supply of this drug, the further
manufacturers and suppliers will be pushed underground and the more
dangerous this drug will become.''

The damage caused by drugs was due to poor education about their use, Mr
Fliegner said. In the case of ecstasy, the greatest physical harm was not
from the drug but from overheating and dehydrating which caused symptoms
similar to that found in long-distance runners.

``Education programs involving this drug should focus on harm minimisation
rather than simply saying `Do Not Use','' Mr Fliegner said.

Similarly, media misrepresentation of the drug Gamma Hydroxy Butyrate -
known as liquid ecstasy or Grievous Bodily Harm - had failed to minimise its
possible harm. He said users should be told that the drug, first synthesised
in France in the early 1960s and still used in Europe as a relaxant during
childbirth, should not be consumed with alcohol because it caused the user
to fall into a deep sleep, such as happened on the Gold Coast in October
1996, when 10 people were hospitalised after collapsing.

According to Mr Fliegner, a lost opportunity for harm minimisation occurred
when the voluntary drug education group, Rave Safe, approached the Victoria
Police drug squad to analyse ecstasy tablets so Rave Safe could help people
distinguish safe from not-so-safe tablets.

``The police agreed on the condition that they be given the names of the
people trading in these tablets,'' he said. ``Of course Rave Safe could not
assist in that regard so (it is) back to square one and a perfect
opportunity to prevent ... medical problems ... was missed.''

Mr Fliegner shares the view that dance culture, and the recreational
drug-taking it implies, is embraced by young people because it returns them
to their primitive selves.

``Dance culture may finally be addressing a subconscious need that has
remained untended for thousands of years,'' Mr Fliegner said.

He said we needed to examine our society to find out why people were viewing
the DJ as a god and why drugs were so much a part of the experience.

The head of the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, Mr David
Crosbie, said work was being done with the dance-party culture, such as
ensuring the provision of plentiful water and cool-down rooms and
information on drugs and their combinations.

``That is quite common at dance parties around Australia,'' Mr Crosbie said.
``For obvious reasons a lot of that is not high-profile public work.''