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It's Now Been Over a Decade Since the RAVE Act

It's laws like these that drive everyone to Berlin.

Photo from a 2002 protest against the proposed legislation via

Early this week we looked up at our calendars and realized it had been over ten years since the proposal of the RAVE Act—a bill that aimed to crack down on the United States' "ecstasy epidemic" in the early 00s. The bill was sponsored by then-Senator, now-Vice President Joe Biden, who attached it to the legislation that launched the nationwide kidnapping alert system in place today, AMBER Alert.

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The RAVE Act was an extension of the 1986 crack house law that held tenants and owners responsible for drug sales and use that occurred on their property, and a precursor to the California regulations that persecute parents when minors drink booze at their homes, even if the parents weren't home and didn't know about the party.

By the time it passed, Biden had renamed it the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, perhaps because the initial name was a little too perfect. According to Biden's press secretary, the bill seeks to combat the use of Ecstasy "where it was taking place most often," which "happens" to be at raves. "Senator Biden is not against electronic music," he clarified. So the name of the legislation—an acronym for Resisting Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy—was obviously a coincidence.

According to anecdotal reports on message boards, US military troops toting assault rifles enacted the RAVE Act when they shut down a rave in Utah in 2005. "A few 'troops' rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone 'Get the fuck out of here or go to jail,'" one poster, who claimed to be the DJ at the event, wrote. "They had police dogs raiding the crowd of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides." As the ravers were fleeing the scene, one of the troops allegedly unloaded a can of teargas into the audience.

Despite these message board claims, a New Orleans site reported that the RAVE Act was enacted for the first time in Louisana, when DEA agents scoured the State Palace Theatre before an event thrown by dance music promoter Disco Donnie. It's not clear whether or not Disco Donnie had to pay a fine, but one poster on Dallas Dance Music asserted that the police were handing out massive price tags for promoters who violated the RAVE Act. "The fact is this law is the reason that warehouse and field parties went away," wrote the disgruntled raver. "The day they started handing down $250,000 fines to warehouse owners for renting them out as rave venues was the day the rave died."

Rather than ending dance music culture altogether, the RAVE Act arguably drove the renegade parties out of business and led to the rise and boom of licensed commercial events—however, there are plenty who assert that making the parties illegal only drove them farther underground, to abandoned warehouses and remote fields where there were no regulations at all.

Just remember: It's laws like these that drive everyone to Berlin, where you can walk naked down the street while smoking a joint and drinking a beer on your way to the clerb.