Salon on the RAVE Act

Salon.com has a superb article on the RAVE Act. I like Salon’s journalism. They’re not afraid to make it clear they have a bias while still giving the reader the facts, which I think is an ideal stance for a nontraditional Web-only publication to take. When I’m earning the bling-bling again I ought to subscribe. But, back to the point, the article illuminates the sobering fact that no public hearing for the 2003 version of the legislation ever occurred:

All these concerns [about the RAVE Act] may very well have come out during public debate on the law—but, of course, that never happened. Immediately after the AMBER Alert was passed, Sen. Leahy issued a press release complaining about the unrelated legislation that was piggybacked on the bill, singling out the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act as one of the worst offenders. “Business owners have come to Congress and told us there are only so many steps they can take to prevent any of the thousands of people who may attend a concert or a rave from using drugs, and they are worried about being held personally accountable for the illegal acts of others,” he wrote. “Those concerns may well be overstated, but they deserve a fuller hearing … I think we would have been well-served by making a greater effort to find out.”

So the public never even got their full say, and now live music, electronic or otherwise, will suffer. Around DC/MD/VA this sort of legislation will affect everyone from small clubs and underground parties to the big money nights. Legislation like this reflects a fundamental social and moral ignorance in our politicians; they seem to understand neither the inevitability of substance abuse in the population, nor the appropriate means to punish, without trampling on pawns and innocents, those dealers who prey on the manipulatable.