CALIFORNIA LEGISLATORS PUSH FOR REGULATION OF RAVES, ECSTASY

LOS ANGELES - By a little after midnight Sunday, ticket prices had more
than tripled at Orion, a popular all-age dance club downtown. Teen-agers
wearing baggy pants and candy necklaces mixed with older club fans in line,
where the trance music playing indoors was reduced to a deep, repetitive beat.

Should legislation currently in the California Assembly pass, promoters of
electronic music clubs like Orion would face increased scrutiny from local
permitting authorities and law enforcement.

The bill, considered on the assembly floor last week, would require
promoters of "any electronic music dance event commonly referred to as rave
parties" to submit, 30 days in advance of their event, evidence that they
can recognise and prevent the use of illegal drugs and "drug paraphernalia."

Before becoming law, the bill must be passed by the assembly and state
senate, and signed by the governor.

Law enforcement supporters say the bill would better protect young people
that attend "raves" by forcing promoters to pay attention to illegal use of
drugs like ecstasy, GHB, ketamine, methamphetamines and LSD.

Civil liberties groups and music fans say the bill unfairly targets
electronic music and might bring about unforeseen consequences for both
promoters and participators.

This is not the first time citizens have seen legislation targeting raves
and specific kinds of music as conducive to illegal activities and it won't
be the last.

The current bill is aimed at indoor, club or warehouse raves that already
submit permits for their events.

According to reports from the Drug Abuse Warning Network, emergency
department visits resulting from club drug use are rare and usually involve
the use of multiple drugs.

Ecstasy, the drug singled out in much of the recent legislation against
raves, is popular amongst middle-class adolescents and young adults, and
can result in long-term cognitive impairment, according to the Drug
Enforcement Agency.

"It is my sincere belief that our children are facing an ever-changing and
often dangerous world. In authoring this bill, I know I am doing my part to
help protect all children by limiting our children's access to drugs," said
assembly member Nancy Havice in the analysis portion of the bill.

According to Carlos Benilla, chief of staff for Havice, children are using
drugs openly at rave events, so the legislature wants to be assured
promoters are paying attention to what goes on at the events.

The groups that oppose the bill acknowledge that drug use occurs at rave
events, but say the threat the bill poses to civil liberties cannot be
justified.

The Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has
launched an Internet campaign against the bill, calling it
unconstitutional, unreasonable and vague. According to its Web site, the
bill "denies to one group of people the same level of freedom that others
enjoy."

Benilla had no comment about ACLU's campaign and accusations, but said
"we're not targeting a specific kind of music; we're targeting a specific
kind of activity that is taking place."

The problem, according to the Centre for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, is
that the bill says just the opposite, and "profiling people on the basis of
what type of music they listen to . . . is absurd."

For numerous civil liberties groups, this is not the first anti-rave
legislation they have opposed.

Britain began targeting electronic music in the early 1990's. For its
purposes, it defined "rave music" as any music with successive, repetitive
beats.

According to University of California-Los Angeles musicology professor
Robert Fink, that definition became a joke when artists began to subtly
manipulate the music so that their beats were irregular by fractions of a
second.

The regulations in Britain demonstrate "what happens when you let
politicians get into the musicology business," Fink said.

In the United States, legislation against raves began in the late 1990's in
the form of local initiatives enforcing juvenile curfews and licensing
requirements for large public gatherings.

Legislation similar to that in the state assembly is currently pending in
Congress to hold event promoters criminally responsible for the illegal
conduct at their events and to provide financial incentives to communities
that pass anti-rave laws.

Much of the regulation of rave events, however, relies on older statutes,
like federal "crackhouse laws" against building managers that know about
the use or distribution of controlled substances in their buildings.

Marsha Rosenbaum, who conducted the first federally funded sociological
study on ecstasy, said the regulation on raves is part of "the drug scare
du jour" over ecstasy.

"Increasingly draconian penalties for use and distribution are being
devised by eager politicians, making [ecstasy] America's new 'reefer
madness,'" Rosenbaum said in an article for the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.

When Fisk teaches the "History of Electronic Dance Music" at UCLA, he
emphasises that legislation against raves is part of a larger societal
concern with rebellious music.

Since the industrial era, there has been socially deviant music associated
with the release of stress through dance that mimics and mocks the
monotonous element of factory work, Fisk said.

The danger of the new bill is that it could more deeply polarise the
electronic music scene in California by pushing small raves further
underground, Fisk said.

Some fans of electronic music are disenchanted with the "rave scene" in its
current state, though, and see the new bill as a positive step.

Jason Bentley, the DJ for KCRW's "Metropolis," said the time has come for
promoters and young people to take responsibility for their actions and for
the reputation raves have acquired.

"Part of what makes a rave a rave is the nature of it being illegal and
underground," Bentley said. Holding promoters more responsible for what
happens at their events "is a process we have to go through if the scene
has any future," he said.

Other fans of electronic music, like Griffin Woodworth, a graduate student
in musicology, worry the legislation will have a negative impact on the music.

Woodworth acknowledged drug use has been a part of the development of
electronic music, but said legislating music for that reason is an
"unjustifiable leap."

"Drugs do not make the music, and music does not cause the drugs,"
Woodworth said.