<I>ACLU Sues To Help Ravers Get Their Glow Sticks Back Civil-rights organization fighting ban on rave accessories in New Orleans. Clayton Smith is no longer on the Air Force Sabre Drill Team, but he still enjoys creating new drills involving dance and acrobatic moves, and he likes to test out his routines at raves - leaving his sword at home, of course. Now he's being told to leave his glow sticks and pacifier there too, thanks to what the American Civil Liberties Union is calling the government's "culture war against raves." So Smith, fellow rave-goer Michael Behan and the ACLU have asked a federal court to help ravers in New Orleans get their glow sticks back. Their suit, filed Tuesday, also seeks to stop the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency from banning pacifiers, masks and chill rooms at a rave scheduled for Friday. "The government's ban on cultural symbols does nothing to prevent drug use, while striking at the heart of First Amendment freedoms. ... Dancing and music are protected by the Constitution," Graham Boyd, director of the ACLU's Drug Policy Litigation Project, said in a statement. "It is time the American public realized that raves are not the havens for rampant drug use that the government has led them to believe and are in fact an established form of youth culture," the statement said. The events leading up to the lawsuit go back to January, when the DEA sued the State Theater's promoters under the federal "crack house" law for holding raves at which Ecstasy allegedly was consumed. In May, the promoters, Rich and Brian Brunet, entered into a plea bargain, paying $100,000 in fines and agreeing to ban glow sticks, pacifiers, masks, personal massagers and chill rooms from any future events, according to the lawsuit. On August 4, theater security confiscated glow sticks and a pacifier from Smith and a hand-held massager from Behan, an insurance agent who attends raves in a "Mr. Bunny" costume and passes out candy. Another plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, performance artist Steven McClure, has been warned by the theater that his group cannot wear glow necklaces at a planned March concert, the lawsuit says. According to the suit, the banned items were categorized as drug paraphernalia. "It is nonsensical to think that glow sticks and masks can be used to ingest drugs," Boyd said in his statement. The ACLU is asking the court to issue an injunction that would prevent the State Theater from having to honor the plea agreement during a rave scheduled for Friday. A spokesperson for the DEA could not be reached for comment.</I> http://www.sonicnet.com/news/story.jhtml?id=1446856
Sorry I have to ask this, but: what the hell are the glow sticks, masks, pacifiers, personal massagers and chill rooms used for at raves?
OF COURSE, this is just speculation... Masks- Sometimes they coat vick's vapor rub on the inside.. not illegal, but I guess it might feel better on ecstasy or something... Glowsticks- They look awesome in darkness and under the influence of LSD or ecstasy, people get tracers off them... I don't really know why pacifiers are used.. something to suck on? Personal Massagers- these are used to massage... personally. Chill Rooms- I've seen ambient rooms. I imagine this is the same idea. The main dance room plays house beats.. but this room plays more ambient, psychedelic music that people can chill too. In my experience, lots of making out and other acts take place in this room as well... Again... this is only what I've heard...
There is sort of a war on raves going on, which I sort of understand, but don't agree with. I know that the WEMF in Toronto, Canada is in jeapordy of happening next year, which is upsetting since I've got plans to go and meet a few friends up there. The basic premise is that "ever raver does special k, ecstacy, and various and sundry other substances" and that without raves, those people won't do those. The facts are that A) people will do those drugs anyway, and B) not all ravers do those. Just my 2 cents.
glow sticks are... well.... used like glow sticks should be used, you use them while your dancing and it looks sweet. pacifiers are generally used by people on ecstacy, not sure why though, I've been told it's to keep people from swallowing their tongue, but I've no evidence to back this up.
I've never been to a rave but I did x a few times back in the late 80's.The pacifier thing must be for the teeth grinding that invariably accompanys the use of the extasy drug. In no way do I condone the use of any type of drug,but banning something as silly as a glowstick is ludicrious and will have no effect on the problem of teen drug use.
It seems to me that as part of a plea bargain, these limitations were agreed to by the promoters. An actual link to drug use is irrelevent. If they wanted people to have glow sticks and pacifiers (snicker) they should not have agreed to bar them from their promotions.
Salon had a nice article on this subject a couple of months back, at the time of the Brunet's plea bargain. Here's a comment about that plea: No argument here....
Glowstick?! Pacifier?! You kids are a joke! Why anyone would wanna advertise what drugs they are on would a be a complete joke to me. You young kids are young, dumb and full of poo-poo! ...you have no iea of how to do drugs and get away with it!
And MDMA is perfectly cool even if you don't have glowsticks. Try the Elephant double stacks. If you want to enjoy the full power of the glowstick, consider 2ct7, aka Blue Mystic, aka 2,5-dimethoxy-4-(n)-propylthiophenethylamine.
Glow sticks: Extremely cool to look at when people wave them around in front of your face really fast, especially while strobe lights are flashing in the process. The experience is apparently dramatically increased while a person is rolling (on ecstacy). Pacifiers: Useful to prevent teeth grinding, but when a person is on X, the nerves become radically more sensitive, and sucking on a pacifier is a good way to stimulate the mouth, where a lot of nerves are. This is why people like to hug, make out, and give/receive massages while they are on X. X is bad because apparently it releases a lot of saratonin from the brain. Saratonin makes you extremely happy for a while, but the next day, a person can be prone to depression, since it takes a while to replenish saratonin. Supposedly , if you take X for a really long period of time, you can be prone to severe and even permanent depression. Drugs R Bad, except weed.
Ever hear of 5-hydroxy tryptophan? MDMA gets a bad rap. The seretonin thing is just the best thing that they could come up with to discredit it. Blah, blah, blah. Severe and perminant depression. Blah, blah, blah. MDMA is good. The ol' green herb will give you short and long term memory problems. Smoking it will cause lung cancer, because it has 4-5 x the tar and carcinogens as tobbaco, not to mention the fact that you don't smoke it through a filter. You pot-heads need to realize just because the active ingreedients in your doobage aren't addictive, doesn't imply that it's not unhealthy. Give it up. There is very limited evidence that MDMA has any long-term side effects. There is quite a bit of evidence that MJ does. I urge you to give it up. Embrace MDMA. Embrace 5ME0-DMT. Embrace all of the phenalethylamines, including mescline, 2CB, 2CT7, DOM. Embrace LSD. Your weed is bad for you. MJ is the classic working-man's seditive. Like the coca leaves in South America, and cathula edulis in Somalia and Ethopia, MJ is the intoxicant of the underclass. The drug that they take to enable themselves to sleepwalk their ways through their pathetic existences. This has been an (ironicaly) drunken tirade by Ottomaton. Thank You
