Lawmakers Targeting
the Ecstasy of Raves
by Geoff Boucher
LA Times
August 3 2002
NEW ORLEANS -- Dawn was approaching when
the underground wizard stepped center stage at the State
Palace Theatre to survey his electronic wonderland. Laser
lights strafed the grand old chandeliers overhead, and deafening
machine music rattled the opera boxes. The floor was packed
with young, sweaty dancers.
"Great crowd," J. Donnie Estopinal said.
And then, with a boyish smile, he added: "I wonder which
ones are the cops."
The gangly 32-year-old hefted a chugging
smoke machine and aimed it toward the audience of more than
3,300. If there were any undercover drug agents in the Canal
Street theater--and there almost certainly were--Estopinal
was suddenly gone before their eyes, vanished in a billowing
white cloud. It was a rare moment of low visibility for
the promoter whose parties have been ground zero for a federal
excursion into the rave world.
The newest front in that campaign is a
U.S. Senate bill that has wide support on Capitol Hill.
The legislation has a catchy name--the RAVE Act, which stands
for "Reducing America's Vulnerability to Ecstasy."
The act would tweak a 16-year-old federal
drug law, originally crafted to prosecute owners of crack
houses, by expanding its definition of a site devoted to
drug enterprise to include one-time events and outdoor gatherings.
The law would make it a felony to house events that knowingly
profit from a drug culture. Its clear model has been last
year's case, brought here, of the United States of America
vs. Estopinal.
"I still can't believe it sometimes, when
I think of what's happened," Estopinal said. "They told
me these federal drug laws were going to put me in prison
for 20 years. But not for buying drugs, not for selling
drugs, not for using drugs. They never said I did any of
that. They said I put on raves. They looked around for somebody
to pound, and I was the lucky guy."
Estopinal said his only knowledge of drugs
at his raves is the "same common-sense knowledge that tells
me there's drugs at concerts and clubs everywhere." The
government case against Estopinal fizzled, and charges against
him were eventually dropped, but that has not deterred authorities
from using the New Orleans case as a template. The campaign
has sent a chill not only through the electronic dance world,
but also the ranks of civil liberty advocates.
"The State Palace case was the opening
battle, and it's absolutely critical in understanding the
RAVE Act, which now appears to be a priority in the Senate
with a very frightening prospect of passing," said Graham
Boyd, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project.
"What's extraordinary here is the government recasting of
the drug laws to take an activity that has never been considered
criminal before and then criminalize it. And it's an activity
very intertwined with free expression.
"Basically," the attorney said, "we're
talking about putting on a party."
Not so, says Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
(D-Del.), who introduced the RAVE Act and has taken a prominent
role in Senate hearings over the last two years regarding
Ecstasy and other club drugs.
"Despite what opponents of the bill would
have you believe, promoters who sponsor events where people
can dance in a safe, drug-free environment have nothing
to fear from my bill," Biden said. "My legislation is aimed
at the promoters who seek to profit from knowingly putting
their customers at risk.... Next week the problem may be
country music bars or hip-hop clubs. Quite frankly, I don't
care what type of music is playing or what the venue is.
What I do care about is the behavior of promoters who turn
their events into drug dens."
Generational Conflict
While the RAVE Act and the prosecution
of Estopinal are matters of law, a core question of the
great debate is cultural and generational: Are raves about
music or drugs?
Opponents of the RAVE Act say the law
could be stretched to go after concert promoters who book
reggae artists and sell marijuana-themed T-shirts, or venues
that host jam bands in the Grateful Dead tradition and sell
black-light posters.
The legal saga of the State Palace is
a jumbled tale of British dance party traditions, Beltway
politicking and a law originally written to nail shut the
doors of urban drug havens.
In 1986, the "crack house" laws were created
to help police fight the anonymous churn of cocaine houses.
Dealers arrested in the morning were replaced by afternoon,
so the law presented a more practical target in the property
owners. The law made it a felony to knowingly house and
profit from a drug enterprise.
In New Orleans in January 2001, a federal
grand jury was asked: Are rave promoters really all that
different from the property owners who collect cash for
letting drug dealers set up shop under their roofs? The
answer came in a sealed indictment against Estopinal and
the owners of the State Palace.
The rave parties at this venue,
which sits in a gritty commercial district on the
fringe of the French Quarter, follow the familiar beats
of those set up in clubs, outdoor fields and warehouses
in Los Angeles, Miami, Berlin, Tokyo and beyond. The throbbing
electronic music and pulsing psychedelic lights create sensory
overload, and a crowd vibe prevails that could be viewed
as neo-hippie. And, of course, there are drugs.
The effects of Ecstasy include euphoria,
increased sensuality and a buzzing intensification of the
senses--all of which are stoked by the rave atmosphere.
But Ecstasy and other club drugs such as ketamine and GHB
can also be hazardous for ravers who dance in crowded, broiling
rooms for marathon parties. Body temperatures soar, hydration
dips, kidneys can fail and seizures can set in.
When authorities came after Estopinal
and the owners of the venue, Robert and Brian Brunet,
they pointed to a parade of limp youngsters taken
to hospitals. When he introduced the legislation, Biden
cited Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that 400
teens attending State Palace raves had overdosed over a
two-year period, a total hotly contested by Estopinal. There
is no debate, however, that in 1998 the drug-related death
of a 17-year-old girl who had been at a State Palace rave
shifted the venue from local irritant to formal target.
In the months leading up to the grand
jury, DEA undercover agents reported that they bought 13
grams of Ecstasy at eight State Palace raves. The government
would argue that Estopinal and the Brunet brothers knew
dealers were active at the raves.
The government also said the attributes
of the State Palace raves pointed to complicity by Estopinal
and the Brunets in a drug enterprise. Prosecutors argued
that the venue sold items--such as glow sticks, baby pacifiers
and mentholated inhalers--that are associated with club
drug culture. Defense attorneys told Estopinal and the Brunets
the case was an ominous one, and the defendants agreed tentatively
to a plea bargain that would land them in prison for terms
of one to two years. The American Civil Liberties Union,
however, persuaded the men to fight the case.
ACLU attorney Boyd said this week that
his organization's efforts and negative media coverage sapped
the government's momentum in a case it hoped to close with
a quick and precedent-setting plea.
The government did win a plea bargain,
but it was a muted victory. All charges against Estopinal
and the Brunets as individuals were dropped. Instead, the
corporation that owned the State Palace entered a guilty
plea on the crack house laws, accepted a $100,000 fine and
agreed to a ban on items such as glow sticks.
A Political Victory
The victory was undermined in several
ways. In the days after the plea, a new corporation was
created by the Brunets to secure their liquor license. The
$100,000 fine has never been collected, Boyd said, and an
ACLU civil suit on behalf of State Palace patrons and artists
negated the ban on rave items. "It was a completely empty,
face-saving victory that meant nothing legally," he said.
"But it did have meaning politically."
Assistant U.S. Atty. Al Winters, who handled
the State Palace case, said Thursday he could not comment
on the case, and he cited a pending government appeal to
reinstate the rave items ban. He did offer one insight:
"Once we executed search warrants at the State Palace Theatre,
the overdoses in the local hospitals went from 12 every
time they had a rave to none. None. That's why we got into
the case. It was to try to stop the overdoses, and so far
we're successful."
DEA Director Asa Hutchinson this week
said the New Orleans case was a worthwhile prosecution,
but he said the "important tool" of the Crack House Law
would be more potent in cases in which promoters actually
deal drugs or have more traceable ties to dealers.
"We're not trying to shut down raves,
but we will, and we should, put on notice any rave promoter
who is going to facilitate, encourage or engage in Ecstasy
distribution that we're coming after them," Hutchinson said.
"They're taking advantage of parents, taking advantage of
teenagers and doing a disservice to the music they purport
to love."
Security searches at the State Palace
are more intense these days, and the wait in line can stretch
to two hours. But few searches can stop smuggling completely.
In a rear row of seats, three ravers who appeared to be
in their early 20s huddled together as a fourth used a credit
card to sort white powder on a small pane of glass illuminated
by a glow stick.
That scene may be part of the ritual for
some ravers, but Robert Brunet said the event is truly defined
by the stage where, last weekend, DJs making as much as
$3,000 an hour and flown in from as far away as Europe created
sonic collages.
"If this were about drugs, we would get
local [DJs], anybody, and just put them up there," Brunet
said. "That would be a lot easier. Kids wouldn't drive 10
hours to get here, either. Those are stars up there."
Edgy music scenes and drug culture have
danced together for years, of course, from the smoky clubs
of the Jazz Age to the tie-dyed trails of Woodstock and
the bathroom lines of Studio 54. But Biden says that, no
matter the name of the bill, this is legislation about drugs,
not music events.
The RAVE Act, introduced in mid-June,
has raced through the Senate process. Though ACLU attorney
Boyd says he once viewed the bill as a political flare--shot
up for attention but without real lasting heat--it now sits
on the Senate's consent calendar, meaning it could pass
after the summer recess without debate. (There is no House
version of the bill.)
The RAVE Act is given good odds by Hutchinson.
"It's a little bit early to predict, but it has a tremendous
amount of support in Congress because of the concern about
club drugs. And that concern will grow. We haven't seen
all the dimensions of this problem yet.... I think there's
very little public awareness of the problems of Ecstasy,
and the education curve is enormous."
A Clouded Picture
Education is foiled by misinformation,
however, and good data are hard to find in the swirl of
raves. Drug use is the subject of wildly divergent estimates
(from 10% of ravers to 90%, depending on whom you ask),
and pegging the complicity of promoters in the drug trade
may be a slippery matter.
Even the authorities have some fogginess
about their own efforts. In a phone interview this week,
Hutchinson said the New Orleans case was a success because,
at least, the State Palace "no longer has raves, it's been
shut down." When corrected, he asked, "Well, it's not the
same promoter, though, right?"
Last Saturday, getting ready to stage
his latest rave amid the faded majesty of the State Palace,
Estopinal flopped in a chair backstage and said that after
his strange odyssey he is now embracing misinformation and
trying to dance unnoticed in the shadows.
"I don't use the D-word," he said. "Look,
I used to say, 'Yes, to be honest, there is drug use at
raves just like there is at the bars on Bourbon Street and
at rock concerts and sporting events.' And then [the prosecutors]
pulled out the old interviews and said that showed I was
aware of the drug dealers and was creating a place for them.
It was crazy. So now? Well, now there are no drugs at raves."
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