Lawmakers addicted to the quick fix

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:51:00 +0000

Two years ago I wrote and directed "Groove," a low-budget independent film that depicted one night at an underground San Francisco rave. Within six months of its release by Sony Pictures Classics, a friend who was training at the Seattle Police Department told me that instructors were using my film as a training video, teaching officers what glow-sticks, chill rooms, candy, black lights and DJs symbolized: Drugs, and lots of them.

For the last three years, as raves have begun to register on the national radar -- in part due to an explosive growth of Ecstasy use among youth in America -- the government has been struggling to address what it sees as a growing epidemic. This week, legislators are poised to vote on the most recent and perhaps most comprehensive attempt to date to control the use of Ecstasy: the shrewdly named "RAVE Act" ("Reducing America's Vulnerability to Ecstasy").

Salon.com > Greg Harrison

Lawmakers addicted to the quick fix