CONGRESS CRASHING RAVER PARTIES

Music fans, ACLU fight bill extending a crack house law to cover dance events.

WASHINGTON -- Two young women on an urgent mission have been lugging boxes
into the offices of U.S. senators this past week. The boxes contain
petitions an inch thick, one for each senator. Nearly 10,000 signatures
were collected on the Internet in five days.

The petitions declare: "This bill is a serious threat to civil liberties,
freedom of speech and the right to dance."

Look out, Congress: The ravers are coming.

"We're offended by the fact they're blackballing an entire musical genre,"
said Amanda Huie, checking senators' names off her list Tuesday afternoon.

The genre in question is electronic dance music, which fans enjoy at
all-night parties called raves. Legislation in Congress could hold
promoters responsible if people attending the events use illegal drugs,
such as Ecstasy, the party drug frequently associated with raves.

The Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002 -- or the RAVE
Act -- has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee and is on the consent
calendar, meaning it could receive final approval without a roll call vote
at any time. When he introduced the bill in June, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del.,
said "most raves are havens for illicit drugs," and congressional findings
submitted with the bill label as drug paraphernalia such rave mainstays as
bottled water, "chill rooms" and glow sticks.

The bill would expand the existing federal crack house law, which makes it
a felony to provide a space for the purpose of illegal drug use, to cover
promoters of raves and other events.

Caught by surprise, some ravers briefly considered a more theatrical
protest on the Hill, perhaps showing off totems of their culture -- rainbow
hair, baggy pants, extended trance jams and those controversial glow
sticks. But no. This is Washington, and ravers know the ways. Huie, dressed
quietly in slacks and shirt, said people from 49 states signed the
petition. (Ravers must be scarce in North Dakota.)

Biden's staff has been surprised, too -- by the sudden outcry. "We thought
this would be an innocuous bill that everybody would rally in support of,"
said Alan Hoffman, Biden's chief of staff.

"It violates the First Amendment," said Marv Johnson, a lawyer for the
American Civil Liberties Union.

Johnson argues that while there is no constitutional right to smoke crack,
there is, in fact, a right to dance.