I do favour repeal of drug laws, and I think there should be no minimum age for it. I would rather my hypothetical 15-year-old smoke pot than drink beer. I’d rather he take an ecstasy pill than drink a fifth of whiskey. I wish that, when I was 15, my (15-year-old) friends smoked pot instead of drinking.
Why do you not favour repeal of drug laws for minors?
What is the harm of the drug use at raves - harm that doesn’t stem from drugs being illegal? Concrete answers, please, preferrably from someone with direct experience with drug use at raves.
I would feel very unsafe at a rave. Dozens of attractive women rolling on E who all want to have casual sex with me is a prospect too terrifying to consider. Give me violent drunks any day.
I meant “shut down” as in closed for the night, not a board permanently nailed over the front door.
And here’s a list of 58 stores and bars in DC that have had their licenses suspended, and several more revoked. List. And this is by no means a complete list, because I notice that the notorious Club U, which was shut down earlier this year because of criminal activity, does not appear on the list. In any case, I’m certain that all of these establishments actually had a business license in addition to their liquor license. By all reliable accounts, the rave cannot make that claim. Why should cops allow an illegal venture to continue in business if they are not properly licensed?
If the rave promoters were doing their job, they would be kicking out the drug dealers and shady bartenders – just like any other commercial establishment would be expected to do – and the cops would have never had to step in. It’s not the job of the police to maintain a presence at a rave to prevent any laws from being broken. Like any other commercial gathering, the organiziers have the obligation to provide security to maintain lawful order. It seems quite obvious from the coverage of the story that this was not being done. If you want to claim that you’re running a business in compliance with the law, then the owners ought to actually run a business in compliance with the law, otherwise risk getting shut down.
Actually if I was planning on having a crowd this large I would be looking into the fees for ON DUTY police presence. IIRC here in my county this is included in the permit fees for gatherings over X size.
There are piles of permits and licences for any mass gathering for business purposes, look at the streets around many major sporting events. Traffic diversions, police officers directing traffic to assist with flow in and out of such events at the proper times, etc.
Major event venues by design have all the needed permit issues covered as part of their day to day operations (sufficent parking/vehicle access, restroom facilities, security needs, EMS presence, food service, alcohol permits, etc.)
There is little if any reason even if you want the"surprise" location it can just as easily be in one of several easily obtained legal professionally managed venues.
Of course they want money for that…and you don’t control security or where it tends to draw the line WRT various questionably legal practices of your customers.
Do not confuse the operation of an entertainment business with a “freedom of assembly” issue. Did this business have all of its permits? Sales tax registration if applicable? Employees paid how? Income taxes withheld? Workmens comp insurance in place? IF these people didn’t have every i dotted and t crossed they will get ripped a new one by the courts. Failure to hold some permits can invoke criminal penalities on the part of concert promoters/organizers especially if someone is hurt because of their failure to comply with permit restrictions.
As soon as you start selling tickets, its no longer a freedom to assemble issue, its a business that the government has every right to regulate to some degree or another.
I’m confused about this. I get the impression from the OP and other pro-ravers posting here that the security guards were confiscating drugs and other illegal substances from those coming in, and that these confiscated drugs were what the guards were charged with possessing.
I’m decidedly not in the pro-rave camp, but if this particular allegation is true, then I think this is wrong (and will probably not hold up in court).
Well, yeah, and if there’s no honey, babies won’t get botulism, but we don’t set out to prevent beekeeping. I’m asking you if you have any evidence that “they” (Who? The federal government? The state of Utah? The county sheriff) doesn’t like young people to gather because they’re afraid of something like the Kent State shooting.
Because, I have to tell you, that’s kind of a stretch. Not too far from here, the 2005 Boy Scout Jamboree was just held, which was a gathering of about 43,000 kids and teenagers, and the army was nearby (Fort AP Hill isn’t that far away), and there were guns fired (there was trap shooting), but there wasn’t a riot, and there weren’t troops firing on unarmed people. And I don’t see any evidence that anyone in authority had a problem with the Jamboree. In fact, the President came and spoke. So, where’s your evidence?
I don’t see this defense holding water… In my security days, if we found someone in posession of a controlled substance on our property, detained for PD. Pd called in and handled it from there. Searches were done with multiple witnesses in case of accusations of “plants” or questions as to whos drugs they were.
Its a little late especially when they have been in posession of these drugs for hours and made no effort to contact law enforcement. If they wanted to protect themselves without bringing in PD they should have just tore up the ticket and ejected anyone failing inspection from the property. Normal security IIRC is not required to arrest them or confiscate any illegal substances and they do not have any special priveledges WRT possession of controlled substances.
I get that, but what an over-the-top reaction. I think it comes more from social attitudes those held by this commenter in the first news link:
I have to wonder if people would expect the same extreme reaction if the organizer of a country music festival screwed up, permit-wise. Ignorance of the law is no defense, of course, but I suspect that the organizer would be fined, rather than having the gathering broken up by heavily-armed men in combat fatigues. Individual arrests for the attendant public drunkenness and brawling? I can get behind that.
But when you have social pressure to limit public dances of the “sock-hop” variety, you’re gonna have more raves – aren’t you?
After reading all the facts presented, and being as liberal as I can, MS, it appears as if the words of the ravers rebound against them. I watched the tape, I saw standard arrest procedures, no signs of excessive force, and I did see resistors. I doubt, highly that no one resisted. That is the bullshit you receive from everyone who goes through something like this. I took a few select quotes from your eyewitnesses. In it, the people admit that :
1 a drug user was arrested four on 1. They say they kicked him in the ribs. If this was on the tape, all I saw was a perosn resisting and a cop subduing. But, cops do not go one on one-- that is foolish-- so 4 on1, 14 on 1, does not matter, it is NOT* supposed* to be a fair fight.
If the priceless footage was the piece you linked, then all I saw was very CALM police officers and some arrests.
I do not think there is any “license” you can give security guyards to confiscate drugs. If the promotoers wanted to confiscate drugs, then they should have had police present as all other promoters do.
One of the people even reported hundreds of kids (out of about 1500) were driving while intoxicated on drugs, and then drove home “traumatized” after the cops came. Hmm, hundreds of kids on drugs . . . I wonder why the police would have a notion to shut down this event? Secondly, they intended to drive home stoned, anyway, didn’t they? What does it matter they were driving home stoned AND “traumatized?” Is that somehow better than driving stoned and happy? Whatever security was present was certainly lax-- people “obviously” had drugs even after their cars were “searched?” (Not to mention that searching fifteen hundred cars thoroughly in such a short time is impossible.) If there is such thing as probable cause, this has got to be it.
The promoters admit they already had one concert shutdown, this lends credibility to the notion that she did not get the right permits, and even if she did, I think it would be impossible for her to argue she believed this would be a law-abiding event.
Sorry, no fascist state here. Now, I don’t agree with many of the drug laws, but under the laws of this nation, this was a justifiable police action, with little or no unwarrented force.
The cops did not appear to be beating the shit out of the people they tackled. I saw efficient restraint of people resisting arrest. Cops are not trained to be gentle and polite. When someone resists arrest, they are taught to quickly restrain that person, keeping themselves and those around them safe from someone who may be violent, or have a weapon. You knock the person to the ground, pin them there, and shout orders for compliance.
Sorry MS, but 1500 kids, in the middle of the night, getting drunk and stoned without any legal supervision and then driving home is not something I can agree with.
I don’t dare speak for everybody, but I haven’t seen that anyone in this thread has a problem with ‘raves’. No matter what sort of event it is, if you don’t have the proper licenses and permits you shouldn’t have it. Not a rave, not a motocross rally, not a sunday worship.
One could quite reasonably argue that these are problems of quality control and information, largely caused by the prohibition of what are (nonetheless) widely and safely consumed drugs. These are not the demonic death pills that they are portrayed to be. The number of people who die as a result of pills is positively minute, and most of those are a result of being sold contaminated crap by the sort of people that repeal would instantly shaft. For example, one of the only deaths in the UK as a result of ecstasy use was Leah Betts, who was so paranoid at the perceived dangers of dehydration that she drank enough water to essentially dissolve her brain. She died not because of pills, but because of radical over-hydration. Something that could have been easily avoided with a little actual education.
As cowgirl said, do you have any actual experience with these drugs, or have you just googled some sites with a list of the worst case scenarios? It’s awfully easy to get the wrong idea like this. Just check this out:
Nasty, eh? Sounds like the sort of thing our citizens should get nowhere near! The hidden scourge of … um, aspirin.
I’m not sure if Justin_Bailey is joking (well, I’m sure he’s joking, I’m just not sure how much), but that sort of perception is precisely the sort of stupid misrepresentation that is made by our government-sponsored campaign of drug-related misinformation. I’m ashamed to admit that I watched it, but I saw Bad Boys II a while back (it was late and Sky Movies was barren, okay?), and the ecstasy club scene in that was far and away the most hilarious bit of the movie (a guy spasms and dies after taking one pill, surrounded by luridly-attired harlots, and is then dumped in an alley). I realise Bad Boys is not an educational movie, but it’s a fairly good example of how far from reality the basic portrayal of these drugs is.