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News > August 21, 2003

Raving Mad

New drug law limits gatherings

By Steven Wishnia

Glow sticks, too, are a gateway to hard drugs, according to a New Orleans court.

Billings, Montana—On May 30, a DEA agent walked into the local Eagles Lodge. The agent informed the hall’s manager that if anyone used illegal drugs at the night’s show, the lodge would be liable for a $250,000 fine, under the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003. The show, a benefit for the Montana State University chapters of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, was cancelled.

“It was a classic violation of the First Amendment,” says Harry Williams of the American Civil Liberties Union’s drug-law project. “The government targeted an event because it disagreed with the political views of its organizers.”

The incident was the first use of the controversial new law, which extends the federal “crackhouse law”—which makes it a felony to “knowingly” and “intentionally” allow property to be used for the purpose of drug dealing, manufacturing, or use—to cover temporary use of property, such as a rave in a rented warehouse. Originally introduced as the “Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act” in 2002 by Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Delaware), it stalled that fall after Congress received more than 40,000 letters of opposition. However, it was enacted last April, when Biden tacked it on to the “Amber Alert” child-kidnapping bill, after excising its “RAVE Act” title and rhetoric about “loud, pounding dance music.”

Taken literally, the law is so broad that letting people smoke marijuana at a private house party could be a federal felony. However, the furor over the Billings incident may have caused the government to back off somewhat. Biden, who had insisted that the law was merely intended to protect children from the horrors of Ecstasy and GHB, was not pleased.

On June 17, he wrote a letter expressing his concern to acting DEA administrator William Simpkins. Simpkins responded that while the agent in Montana had wanted to make sure that the Eagles Lodge owners “fully understood” that the NORML benefit was “likely to promote the use of illicit drugs,” he had “misinterpreted” the law, and the DEA was issuing new guidelines for enforcing it.

“The law will be used to target unscrupulous promoters who use their event to facilitate drug trafficking, who prey on teenagers and young adults,” says DEA spokesperson Will Glaspy. According to a notice the DEA posted on its Web site June 20, it will not apply to private parties or “events where people just happened to use drugs.”

“The law sets the bar very high,” asserts Biden spokesperson Chip Unruh. It is aimed at promoters personally involved in drug sales, he explains, and is not intended to prosecute club owners for patrons’ behavior.

The measure’s critics remain uneasy. The federal government has used the crackhouse law against promoters, and mass arrests at electronic dance parties are common. Last November, police in Racine, Wisconsin raided a rave and charged all the 440-odd people there with patronizing a “disorderly house.”

“I’ve talked to a lot of landowners and promoters, and they are not reassured by the DEA’s promises,” says the ACLU’s Williams. “The nationwide chilling effect is very strong.”

In addition, recent court decisions make it easier to prosecute club owners and promoters for drug use by patrons, notes Bill Piper of the Drug Policy Alliance. On June 20, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals held that a ban on glow sticks—an otherwise legal rave-scene accoutrement—at a New Orleans venue was constitutional. The promoters, prosecuted under the crackhouse law, had agreed to the ban as part of a plea bargain.

The law may end up affecting marijuana-culture events more, speculates Dale Gieringer of California NORML, given that the Bush regime “has decided that pot’s the most dangerous drug.” In the weeks after the Billings incident, an alternative-health fair in Sonoma County, California cancelled plans to have a designated smoking area for medical-marijuana patients. In Seattle, organizers of the annual Hempfest, the nation’s largest pot-legalization rally, decided not to let vendors sell pipes at the event. “If we’re going to fight on First Amendment grounds, we want to be in the best position we can,” says director Vivian McPeak. “This administration is serious about going after our culture.”

Adam Jones, the Billings benefit’s 21-year-old organizer, says the raid was a good thing, because it “grabbed people’s attention” about the law, but he wouldn’t want to go through it again. On probation for possession of psilocybin mushrooms, he was jailed the day before the show for violating it—not telling his probation officer that his employer, the Billings YMCA, had transferred him to another branch for the summer. He also ended up losing his job, and says he’s withdrawing from activism for now.

“It pains me because if anything, my opinions about the need for drug-law reform are stronger now,” he says, “but my probation officer has got the power.”


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  • Reader Comments

    doesn’t this law just prevent people from breaking the law? Just because a group thinks a law shouldn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that they could break it. the event didn’t have to be canceled but it was because the organizers of the event couldn’t insure that there would be no drug use/distribution. where’s the problem?

    Posted by john on Aug 21, 2003 at 11:28 AM

    The Eagles Lodge cancelled the event because they were afraid of the feds, not because of anything the organizers of the event did or could do.

    That’s what this whole story is about. It shouldn’t matter what the event is about, the law’s the law, right? Then why is the DEA arresting 440-some people at a rave? Because they can. This isn’t going to get any better, it’s already being abused by the DEA’s secret police, and it’s brand new!

    Here in California, the entire state got together and decided that it is legal for some people to grow and possess and smoke marijuana.

    The feds have been relentless in sending the message that they have nothing but contempt and scorn for the laws we pass. They arrest, sweep and jail sick people for doing what is legal in this state.

    That’s only _part_ of the problem, but it is why they had to sneak it into the Amber Alert law which everybody wanted their name on quickly. More government fiat from our unsupportive federal government.

    Dump Bush! Elect Dean! Vote for California! Vote NO RECALL!

    Posted by Allan on Aug 21, 2003 at 12:16 PM

    Thanks to In these Times for reporting the truth in times of such manipulation by the media.  This story is an outrage.  The nazis supporting Bush and the DEA need to realize what is really at stake when things like this are allowed to happen.

    Posted by Michael Murray on Aug 21, 2003 at 7:51 PM

    Not to mention all the money we taxpayers are spending to chase down head shop owners and put them in prison.
    Meanwhile senior citizens are starving because they have to choose between eating or taking medicine. Just where the fuck are the priorities anymore?

    Maybe the reason Ashcroft wanted to cover up the statues is to hide their weeping.

    Posted by neil on Aug 22, 2003 at 12:01 AM

    Greetings,
    Another example that BIG CORPORATE BROTHER is taking control of life in _all_ forms. That is their clear and no longer “hidden” agenda. Elsewhere in these pages, an article makes clear that Mexico’s Pres. Fox has fallen in to corporate influence to exterminate the Chiapas Native People, who just want to live without Malls covering ancient sacred places; all this is against a recent treaty.  Oil exploration has expanded to all possible points, east to west, north to south.  Look at the evidence.

    Like those in Montana, Native People everywhere are under increasing pressure from corporate domination, via the “how _you should_ live brigades, growing and growing.

    I lived in S. Africa for 3 years and witnessed the expansion of Big Brother Corporation influence clearly; the supposed “bright light” of the new S.A. was a blind. The ANC is rife with corruption and has cut new deals with diamond, oil and other mineral corporations from the “north” to extract trillions of $’s from the nation’s natural “wealth.” ANC officials pocketed most of the money.  Mandela may be alive but his principals have evaporated. Winnie is living in a huge _security compound_ in Soweto - lots of armed guards with Kalishniov type guns, “light enough to be carried by a child” (say the ‘gun show’ pamphlets. 

    Poverty is worse than ever and the ANC has approved _nationalized_ companies contining to supply “rebels” anywhere with Kalishnikov type guns, uniforms and equipment. I knew a guy who was working in this business.  he wanted out. Two days later his house burned down with him tied to a chair.  This is South Africa, remember....

    It doesn’t seem to matter what principles may be involved, in this fait a compli.’
    The young man at the end of this story has the right idea. Serious ecology groups saw this years ago an retreated to the wet places over the coast range from Portland Oregon. Activism is best dormant for while. Corporate Masters and their branch of War, the Pentagon, are serious this time.  Wisest to get out of their way.  Environmental surprises are on the way anyway.
    Keep close to those you love.  Protect them.  Savor what they’ve left us, of Nature, of freedom of thought (Kill the television), of whole food, etc.
    Namaste’
    Ryokan

    Posted by Ryokan on Aug 22, 2003 at 12:06 AM

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