After the tragic events at last weekend’s HARD Summer Music Festival the dance music community has been set ablaze with editorials and news discussing the event, the dance music community, and electronic music events as a whole.
For those who don’t know, HARD Summer 2015 resulted in 2 deaths: 18-year old Tracy Nguyen and 19 year-old Katie Dix. If you’ve been involved in the EDM community for any period of time you’ve undoubtedly heard similar stories.
This has to stop.
Looking from the outside in, many people that aren’t involved in the EDM scene or don’t understand its culture see the events at HARD Summer as an unsurprising statistic; many expect rampant drug use from these “techno kids.” Just like the countercultural revolution of the 60’s, many don’t like our culture simply because they don’t understand it.
As has been prevalent throughout every society since the beginning of written time, humans have readily chosen intoxication in their lives.
Not everyone, obviously, but it’s a moot point to think otherwise. In light of these facts most of the world still follows abstinence only and criminal policies in regard to drug use – it’s an outdated system, and it’s ineffective.
As many of us who’ve gone through backwards, abstinence-only sex ed classes in grade school and middle school can tell you – they don’t work.
By your mid-twenties, how many unmarried virgins are out there in today’s day and age? Not many.
In fact, in 2008 the Washington Post reported on a University of Washington study that determined that teenagers who received comprehensive sex-ed were 60% less likely to get pregnant than teenagers who received abstinence-only education.
The statistics tell a startling truth: the abstinence-only approach has failed.
We use the same approach for drug use. Legislation like the RAVE and Crack House Acts prevent festival organizers from allowing harm-reducing organizations from educating attendees on the potentially harmful substances that some concert-goers might choose put in their bodies.
It’s time for a change in policy and to recognize that abstinence and criminalization related policies don’t work.
In a famous example, 10 years after Portugal famously decriminalized all drugs and moved toward an education, harm reduction, and treatment-based approach (as opposed to a criminal one), drug abuse in the country has been halved. HALVED. What can this be attributed to?
According to Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction:
This development can not only be attributed to decriminalization but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies.
One such risk reduction policy that’s insanely easy to implement is on-site drug testing at major music festivals. Organizations like The Bunk Police and DanceSafe are already equipped to do this, for free, for festival attendees – but they’re not allowed to.
In an interesting esposé into festival drug culture by Australia’s 60 minutes, Dr. David Caldicott arrived at an interesting conclusion:
We know for a fact that when there is a pill-testing program in place, that consumers actually change their behaviour […] If the result of a test on a pill is something other than what they thought it would be, they frequently elect to abandon taking that pill. And we have the opportunity to let them know and interface with them about how they can moderate their behavior.
The same program highlights studies from Austria’s decades-long drug testing programs that show that one-third of users who have their drugs tested elect not to take them.
While it won’t completely solve the problem, risk reduction policies such as pill testing are proven to work. We need to implement them, but first we need change.
We need change from society, dance music culture, lawmakers, and ourselves.
We need to change our taboos about drug use to encourage dialogue and discussion. As a dance music culture we need to shout at the top of our lungs that we’re not okay with limiting information that can keep our friends, families, and community alive and safe. As a legislative body we need to determine what’s the statistically better alternative: jail or education and treatment. As ourselves, we need to take care of one another.
It’s our duty to protect our friends and our scene, and it falls on every one of us; from the promoters of our favorite events to each and every one of us on the dance floor.
If we don’t act then these unfortunate happenings will continue to occur.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis is currently calling for a temporary ban on raves on county property. On the surface the move appears to provide a stopgap to the “rave problem.” Once examined, the landscape shifts.
Consider this analogy: a major music festival is a public party much like a bar. Bars are regulated, policed, and audited by the law. They’re generally benign in terms of lawlessness.
If music festivals and raves are forced to return to the underground, these “bars” face no choice but to turn into un-policed events and concerts that more closely resemble the atmosphere of a house party.
As anyone who’s ever attended a house party can tell you, there’s a lot more potential for ill-advised behavior than there is in any public drinking establishment. There’s more underage drinking, untrained or ill-equipped “staff,” etc.
It promotes a greater air of lawlessness.
Instead of sending dance music events back to the unregulated underground, let’s enact policies that ensure a safe and healthy environment for attendees. This falls upon our leaders and lawmakers.
Our message to civic leaders is that we should work together to find a better alternative than forcing the dance music scene to return to the underground. As a country we can’t eradicate the innate human lust for intoxication, but we can mitigate it.
Rather than banning events like HARD Summer and choosing to ignore taboo culture like drug use, let’s install safeguards to ensure that individuals are equipped to deal with these problems.
Our message to festival promoters and organizers is to help lead the fight for safer policies. Help rally the troops, as you already do, continuing to push for new legislation. You have the power and the platform to inspire social change, let’s keep pushing toward a better future.
Maybe mandated free water refill stations and chill-out locations are the perfect solutions.
Maybe allowing on-site drug testing and education is the silver bullet; Maybe it’s the combination of these things and more that will be the golden ticket.
Who knows? One thing is certain – we can’t ignore what’s happening and push it out of the public eye.
It’s our duty to unite and show that we won’t stand for needless deaths. We’d rather stand for on-site drug testing than preventable casualties. We stand for the ability to make an informed decision, even if we don’t agree with that decision in the first place.
We stand for our people.
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