How the RAVE Act works!
Think only conservative religious sects outlaw dancing? Think again. Dancing, or at least clubs that offer dancing to electronic DJ music, could be in the fast lane to extinction thanks to an act of Congress. Last week it passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, also known as "the RAVE Act," as part of the larger PROTECT Act (a.k.a. the "Amber Alert" bill).
The RAVE Act strengthens existing "Operation of a Crackhouse" legislation, under which owners of a property are held responsible for any drug use on their premises. Penalties for violating the Crackhouse statute can include fines of up to $500,000 for an individual or $2 million for a corporation, a potential 20-year prison sentence and asset forfeiture.
When used against a real crack house, where individuals gather for the specific purpose of doing drugs, the law makes sense; when applied to music venues where a determined patron can always find a bathroom stall or dark corner to imbibe a chemical, it's lunacy.
In two landmark cases, New Orleans' State Palace Theatre, capacity 3,500, and Florida's Club La Vela, the largest nightclub in the country with a capacity of 6,000, were prosecuted under the Crackhouse law because, somewhere in their vast confines, it was charged, people using drugs.
It gets crazier. As evidence in the Club La Vela trial, prosecutors offered a picture from the club's Web site, depicting a man giving another man a massage, as proof of drug use -- because, they insisted, only drugs could incite such abnormal activity. In the Palace Theatre case, prosecutors cited bottled water and glow sticks as paraphernalia for use of the drug ecstasy.
The RAVE Act's strengthening of existing legislation and its expansion of what can be deemed a crack house could have a chilling, even killing, effect on club culture. As anyone who's gone to 1015 Folsom or other local dance nightspots lately can attest, an extensive search -- more thorough than an airport security check -- is now accepted procedure. What more can conscientious club owners do to protect themselves against the crack house crackdown? Not much, it seems.
"There's no clause having to do with due diligence, or counter measures you could take to mitigate liability or culpability," says Gary Blitz, National Coordinator for the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund (EM:DEF). "Yet a nightclub can only search people so much without violating their rights. The government can't even keep drugs out of the federal prison system, where they do cavity searches."
EM:DEF (emdef.org), the San Francisco Late Night Coalition (sflnc.org) and other dance activists want to convince Congress to add a safe harbor clause to the statute, exempting from prosecution those businesses taking precautions against potential patron drug use. The ACLU is on the case, but it's an uphill battle.
"We're trying to get everyone within the electronic dance community more involved and educated, " Blitz says. "So far youth dance culture hasn't been that political."
Word to club kids: Now would be a good time to start. Take your glow sticks in hand and fight for your right to party -- before the party's over.
From this website
Neva Chonin, Chronicle Pop Music Critic
Think only conservative religious sects outlaw dancing? Think again. Dancing, or at least clubs that offer dancing to electronic DJ music, could be in the fast lane to extinction thanks to an act of Congress. Last week it passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, also known as "the RAVE Act," as part of the larger PROTECT Act (a.k.a. the "Amber Alert" bill).
The RAVE Act strengthens existing "Operation of a Crackhouse" legislation, under which owners of a property are held responsible for any drug use on their premises. Penalties for violating the Crackhouse statute can include fines of up to $500,000 for an individual or $2 million for a corporation, a potential 20-year prison sentence and asset forfeiture.
When used against a real crack house, where individuals gather for the specific purpose of doing drugs, the law makes sense; when applied to music venues where a determined patron can always find a bathroom stall or dark corner to imbibe a chemical, it's lunacy.
In two landmark cases, New Orleans' State Palace Theatre, capacity 3,500, and Florida's Club La Vela, the largest nightclub in the country with a capacity of 6,000, were prosecuted under the Crackhouse law because, somewhere in their vast confines, it was charged, people using drugs.
It gets crazier. As evidence in the Club La Vela trial, prosecutors offered a picture from the club's Web site, depicting a man giving another man a massage, as proof of drug use -- because, they insisted, only drugs could incite such abnormal activity. In the Palace Theatre case, prosecutors cited bottled water and glow sticks as paraphernalia for use of the drug ecstasy.
The RAVE Act's strengthening of existing legislation and its expansion of what can be deemed a crack house could have a chilling, even killing, effect on club culture. As anyone who's gone to 1015 Folsom or other local dance nightspots lately can attest, an extensive search -- more thorough than an airport security check -- is now accepted procedure. What more can conscientious club owners do to protect themselves against the crack house crackdown? Not much, it seems.
"There's no clause having to do with due diligence, or counter measures you could take to mitigate liability or culpability," says Gary Blitz, National Coordinator for the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund (EM:DEF). "Yet a nightclub can only search people so much without violating their rights. The government can't even keep drugs out of the federal prison system, where they do cavity searches."
EM:DEF (emdef.org), the San Francisco Late Night Coalition (sflnc.org) and other dance activists want to convince Congress to add a safe harbor clause to the statute, exempting from prosecution those businesses taking precautions against potential patron drug use. The ACLU is on the case, but it's an uphill battle.
"We're trying to get everyone within the electronic dance community more involved and educated, " Blitz says. "So far youth dance culture hasn't been that political."
Word to club kids: Now would be a good time to start. Take your glow sticks in hand and fight for your right to party -- before the party's over.
From this website
Neva Chonin, Chronicle Pop Music Critic
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