...'BOUT MY GENERATION

RE: California Legislators Push For Regulation Of Raves, News, June 2.

It appears to me that the legislature is attempting to deputise dance club
organisers to enforce laws that are questionable. Leaving aside the debate
over zero tolerance policies, which are unsupported by scholarly evidence,
it would appear to me that it is poor form and unreasonable to expect the
owner of such a business to regulate a covert, easily disguised activity
like drug sales of small pills within his establishment.

The law will have little effect but to glamourise and encourage ecstasy
use. Even if there were a magic wand to end sales in a particular venue, I
have little doubt the market would reorganise quickly in a new venue.

The only thing that will work to discourage ecstasy misuse is proper
education and information.

Unfortunately, our government has continued its reefer madness ways with
this new drug being used widely by wealthy white kids, and it has jumped
the gun on the science to make hysterical declarations of fact that are
based on poor and shoddy science. We do not understand the pharmacology of
ecstasy yet.

It would be wise to do proper science while sharing what accurate
information we have, to get to the point where we can educate fully, and
lastly to accept with serenity that which we cannot change: that many
people will use various substances infrequently and casually, and that
there is nothing we can do about it - beyond education - that is not
counter-productive.

I do not make the rules, I simply study the evidence. I also suspect this
law will go the way of the federal law recently tossed off the books that
outlawed possession of light sticks and Vicks at dance clubs as "drug
paraphernalia." I only hope that my civil liberties will survive beyond the
xenophobic hysteria of the eldest generation over various substances they
associate with "undesirable" immigrants in their ignorance as they sip a
martini and drag on a Camel.