With all due respect, I think you miss the real significance of raves in your paper posted at academia.edu. Prior to the English government's unscientific demonization of ecstasy following the death of raver Leah Betts in the 1990s, the rave scene was the most peaceful and unifying activity in English history. This is the startling and wonderful thing about the rave scene, not the fact that it represents a variety of what we call leisure. (The incredibly rare death in question was caused by the Drug War itself, which criminalized mere research into criminalized substances, thereby rendering it impossible to create "safe use" guidelines for Ecstasy, and making it impossible to warn dancers like Leah about the need to keep properly hydrated while on the dance floor.)
Here are some direct quotes from DJ's about that incredibly peaceful rave scene -- a peace that authorities not only took for granted but actually tried to discourage with their Criminal Justice Bill of 1994:
• "It was the first time that black-and-white people had integrated on a level... and everybody was one." -- DJ Ray Keith.
• "It was black and white, Asian, Chinese, all up in one building," -- MC GQ.
• "Everyone's loving each other, man, they're not hating." - DJ Mampi Swift.
The problem of the rave scene was not Ecstasy. The problem was a Drug Warrior ethos that holds criminalized substances to standards far beyond the safety expectations of any other substances. Aspirin kills thousands a year and yet there is no cry to criminalize it. Alcohol racks up a daily death toll in Britain and yet there are no billboards attempting to hold alcohol responsible for individual deaths. Yet Drug War mythology says that a criminalized substance can be pilloried and completely dismissed the moment that it has even been RELATED, however indirectly, to one single solitary death. This is Drug Warrior propaganda, however, not science.
The best way for authorities to deal with the rave scene is to stop persecuting it and let it thrive as the incredibly peaceful phenomenon that it is -- or rather it WAS before Drug Warriors held Ecstasy to a hypocritical safety standard that no substance in the world could ever live up to, meanwhile doing everything they could to ban research that could have produced safety guidelines for the drug in question.
So, what has government policy actually accomplished so far with respect to the rave scene? It took the most peaceful crowd phenomenon in British history and turned it into a shooting gallery, turning dancers away from Ecstasy and turning them toward anger-facilitating drugs like alcohol instead.
The best thing that government can do about the rave scene, therefore, is to back off and allow peace, love and understanding to actually exist -- rather than demonizing substances that bring such peace about, in deference to America's unprecedented, ahistorical and anti-scientific war on substances of which racist politicians disapprove.
To approach the rave scene from the point of view of leisure is interesting, perhaps, but in my opinion it turns us away from the 6,000-pound gorilla in the room: the fact that the Drug War demonizes substances rather than teaching us how to use them wisely and safely, and the fact that the Drug Warrior judges people, not by the content of their character but by the contents of their digestive system.
Sincerely Yours,
Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com
The Links Police
Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because you still need to read the essay about how the empathogenic drug Ecstasy brought peace, love and understanding to the British rave scene in the 1990s:
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
We've created a faux psychology to support such science: that psychology says that anything that really WORKS is just a "crutch" -- as if there is, or there even should be, a "CURE" for sadness.
It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.
I've always wondered why we don't just let heroin users be -- or better yet, re-legalize drugs and give them choices. Why are they punished for using heroin daily while we praise 1 in 4 women for taking an even more dependence-causing drug every day of their life?
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
A generally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear. --James B. Stockade.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
The American Philosophy Association should make itself useful and release a statement saying that the drug war is based on fallacious reasoning, namely, the idea that substances can be bad in themselves, without regard for why, when, where and/or how they are used.
My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as freely as Benjamin Franklin.
Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because you still need to read the essay about how the empathogenic drug Ecstasy brought peace, love and understanding to the British rave scene in the 1990s:
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