RAVE Act

[daylily]

Yikes! This is scary stuff. Back in March, Senator Joseph Biden attached a RAVE act as a rider to another piece of legislation. RAVE, in this context, stands for Reducing Americans Vulnerability to Ecstacy. : According to this law, it is illegal to

...manage or control any place, whether permanently or temporarily, either as an owner, lesee, agent, employee, occupant, or mortagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, profit from, or make available for use, with our without compensation, the place for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing or using a controlled substance.

This law, taken to its extreme, seems to be saying that if you give a party in your house and one of your guests smokes pot and you're unlucky enough to have to cops arrive at your party, you could be arrested on a drug charge even though you were not using or selling drugs yourself.

I read about this in an opinion essay in a local paper, although I do recall hearing mention of a RAVE act a while back. What do you think of this? Am I overreacting?

[christymama]

This is a hard one. Because just like as if you are a parent you are responsible for your children and the way they act in your house etc. So if there is someone at your party doing drugs then its also your responsiblity to make sure they leave your place if you dont want that there. Now its also true that they have a right to do as they wish but to do it in your home is not their right its yours. On the other hand I can also see that you getting charged for somethng that they did is Not something i would be happy with. If this happened to me I would be pissed off. But I wouldnt allow it in my house in the first place. You pick your friends. Its hard to know. I agree with the bill

[sadie_sabot]

Just stating the obvious here but...i think many more lives are damaged by booze than by ecstasy, which seems to be the target of this....

if I go into a dance club and smoke a joint, under this law the owner of the club is breaking a drug law.

If I go to a Giants game on lsd, the owners of the stadium is breaking the law.

if i go to a techno trance after hours party and do some ecstasy, the host of the party is breaking the law.

Now. who do you think is actually going to be prosecuted under this law? It is way too broad and almost guaranteed to be selectively enforced.

Drug laws are a drag. Not because I'm a big druggie (I'm not), but because there are so many more iportant things to focus on..

[daylily]

Naturally, I have no intention of letting my children or their friends do drugs in my house.

It's supposed to be prudent to drop all one's friends who happen to smoke pot occaisionally? I'd have a pretty short list of friends if I did that.

This act does not mention ecstasy specifically, but covers all controlled substances. Is it just to allow decent, productive members of society to go to jail with murderers and rapists because of tangential connections with drug-users? I don't use drugs, but this law is madness!

[christymama]

I wasnt implying that you would let your children or your friends do drugs in your house. I am sorry if it sounded as if i was I was just trying to make a point in general. Yes in some ways the law is crazy but in other ways it makes since. I dont know if its because of dh is a police officer and i have heard so many stories or what But I do think in some ways if you allow this in your house or place of business then you are in ways responsible. But like I said before that If i was to be charged with something That i didnt know was happenin then I would be upset. There are so many angles to this. I just dont know whats the right one. Hard to know!

[daylily]

That's OK, Christymama. And I can understand the rationale of trying to prevent large-scale events centered around teen age drug use, but as Sadie pointed out, the language of this particular law has such broad language, that just about anyone can become a criminal.

BTW, I don't know all that much about RAVEs in general. I believe a few years ago, Peggy O'Mara wrote a piece defending them, saying they're not the drug-soaked mayhems that everyone says they are.

[Pynki]

Well...

IN my pre children days i went to and threw many a rave.. They were always one of the most accepting places I've ever been whether they were in the middle of the Midwest or on a coast..

Were there drugs there.. Sure.. But there weren't any drugs there that i couldn't find elsewhere, and sometimes it was cheaper to.. Am I a big druggie... :LOL nope.. Never was..

I think this law and the general idea about raves is a fear of teen and young adults being in one place.. If you trust your kids it's not a big deal.. Stupid law in general..

I will absolutely defend raves, and ravers, and the whole idea-ology that seems to go with them.. They are not about drugs... THey are about dancing, and fun, and freedom..

If the time comes, and my 13 or 14 yr old wants to go to a rave i will send them with my blessing.. Raves in general frown on the whole alcohol issue that is rampant with young people in the age range that go..

Just my .02 and my experience with raves, but they are not the horror that most people believe them to be...

Warm Squishy Feelings..

Dyan

[kama'aina mama]

Our society is so F-ed up! the thing is that it is SOOOOOO easy for someone to do drugs and you not even know it. The whole culture is geared to secrecy. So now if I have a dinner party and one guest, unbeknownst to me slips away to the bathroom and pops a pill or does a line, goes at back to the smoking area and smokes something not tobacco while I am tending the grill... I'm a criminal???? I didn't get high. I didn't buy, sell or otherwise supply. I didn't even KNOW! And now I am a criminal. Dumb, dumb law.

We have made what I think is a very poor decision to seperate everyone out by age and now we want to prevent whole decades of ages from gathering at all.

[BinahYeteirah]

bs"d

This law is open to interpretation, which definitely allows selective enforcement. Various cities and states have enacted similar RAVE acts, purposely to outlaw certain youth cultures from gathering. I guess the reasoning is that a few hundred teenagers and young adults with pink hair waving around glow sticks to the beat of music that goes "blip, beeb, tweet" *must be on drugs* (and the people who organized the event must know it and must have thrown this party expressly to encourage drug use)! Which, of course, is totally different from a few middle aged persons toking a joint at an open air rock concert. As a teenager, I was a raver and I remember how these laws were enforced. For example, one could not go to a rave within the city limits of Chicago. Each one was shut down by the cops, while bars, other nightspots, and concerts were ignored as places of potential drug abuse. I don't know the current state of the rave scene in Chicago, but when I used to go, all the parties happened outside the city limits.