HAPPINESS MUSHROOMS AT BONNAROO

MANCHESTER -- Highs off "acid," "crack" and "hash" wasn't what the
Partridge Family had in mind when they recorded "C'mon, Get Happy" for
their hit 1970s television series. But that's exactly what some people
unfortunately had in mind for the Bonnaroo music festival, judging from
early drug arrest reports.

Anyone denying that there's drugs here has to be burying their head in the
sand, Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves said Friday afternoon, a few hours
after the festival got underway.

"They only have to look at the upsurge in the number of drug arrests which
we and surrounding police agencies approaching Bonnaroo are making," Graves
said.

Barely into the first day of concert activity, authorities at Manchester
alone had made more than 50 drug cases, some involving multiple arrests.

"Curiously enough, there are some drugs we have seized that haven't been
seen around here in any quantity for several years," Graves noted.

One concert goer reportedly was caught with a cache of LSD, mushrooms,
ecstacy, hashish, marijuana, valium, xannax and drug paraphernalia worth an
estimated $60,000.

"We are issuing citations in the smaller seizures because the Coffee County
Jail wouldn't hold all of them," Graves said.

"About the best we can do is to reduce the amount of drugs going in to the
festival site to help keep things under control as much as possible."

Most seizures were from people carrying drugs for personal or recreational
use by friends, he said.

But others were in large quantities clearly intended for resale. Felony
possession charges are made in those incidents.

Some 800 festival goers were reported treated for drug overdoses at on-site
medical facilities last year but there were no serious incidents or fatalities.

Eighty thousand tickets were sold this year and more than 70,000 converged
on the 600-acre site on the outskirts of Manchester despite adverse weather
forecasts of a mudfest.

Tickets sold for $160. The festival was a sellout.

While traffic congestion was nowhere as bad as last year, it was heavy enough.

One visitor said it took most of Thursday night to move 20 miles up I-24
from Winchester to the campsite.

But traffic jams created the opportunity for some "cool stop and go gravel
road parties," he said.

Vendors hawking about everything from food to drink, clothing to jewelry
and drums to beads could be seen lining the approaches and everywhere on site.

One entrepreneur sold a mixture of pure grain alcohol, rum and Mountain Dew
which he called "firewater" at $3 a throw to pay for his ticket.

Enough people topped off tanks with the firewater to leave the vendor a
tidy profit.