On June 11, the Seattle & King County Health Department declared an educational war on rave party drugs, holding a press conference to give stern warnings about the dangers of these drugs. The basic information on the health effects of these drugs was correct--dozens of local partiers were transported to county hospitals last year after suffering from physiological problems associated with drugs. The doomsayers' tone, however, gave the impression that this somehow compares to the tens of thousands of kids who attended raves without incident in that same period.
Michael Copass, a nervous Harborview doctor and self-described "old stodge," claimed that kids at raves stay high by sucking Ecstasy through liquid droppers placed on their lapels (in reality, MDMA, or Ecstasy, is ingested in pill form or snorted in powder form). These "totally unmanageable" and "totally psychotic" kids essentially have to take these drugs to tolerate techno music, which he claimed was something no sober person would want to hear.
Shifting nervously on their feet during this embarrassing scene were members of the Seattle chapter of DanceSafe, a decidedly younger organization with its own drug-awareness campaign. Originally ignored by health officials here, DanceSafe is pushing for recognition as an organization that hands out free literature on the dangers of illicit party drugs.
Sounds innocuous enough, but DanceSafe straddles the fence between mainstream and fringe. In addition to literature, the organization frequently offers free "adulteration" tests to make sure that the Ecstasy pills bought by ravers aren't tainted with the more immediately harmful chemical DXM, a legal cough suppressant with deadly side effects when mixed with MDMA. Jennifer Keys, DanceSafe's 30-year-old local spokesperson, compared the group's pill screening to more accepted harm-reduction programs like needle exchange programs. "People are going to use drugs anyway," she says.
Last week's health department press conference is just another sign that parents are concerned about what happens at raves.
DanceSafe's controversial drug screenings have been reported on before, especially by TV news magazines like 20/20 and 60 Minutes. The group takes credit for having detected a major release of Ecstasy pills laced with high doses of DXM in Oakland, California, in the summer of 1999. Critics, however, accuse DanceSafe of encouraging potentially dangerous forms of drug use.
A few days before the news conference, DanceSafe's Keys sent e-mail messages to Seattle Mayor Paul Schell and the entire city council. Her goal was to introduce herself and her group to elected officials.
"We have over 120 volunteers in Seattle and serve several thousand people in the community each month through our services," Keys wrote. "We would like to present ourselves as a resource to you."
Keys and other DanceSafe members see the future of local raves going down one of two paths: either Seattle can try to shut down rave culture entirely, or it can try to live with the fact that some youths will always experiment with drugs. For example, Keys wants to follow the example of San Francisco, where police are giving the group the leeway to provide free drug screening.
Good luck. At press time, Schell has yet to respond to DanceSafe's e-mail messages, and no city council member has taken up the group's cause. And Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske says his department isn't interested in working with DanceSafe. "I don't think that we're particularly supportive," he says. "There are legal issues involved. [Ecstasy] is an illegal substance."
For the time being, it seems, DanceSafe will have to be satisfied fighting to be a half-recognized group that's allowed to speak at scare-tactic-oriented press conferences.
Lauren Walsh contributed to this report.
