If there’s a problem, you do something about it.
When a series of extremely tragic and highly publicized deaths occurred involving drunk driving, Mothers Against Drunk Driving came on the scene in 1980.
By 1984, Congress introduced and passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, which effectively raised the drinking age nationwide to 21 by punishing states who refused to raise it through loss of federal highway ?dollars.
The group championed it as one of its most ?significant victories.
Little did MADD know, however, that by broadly trying to fix a problem, they created another: binge drinking, often underage.
Such well-intended ?efforts can have serious ?consequences.
And sometimes, they can be deadly.
That is the case with the Reducing Americans’ ?Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act, a law introduced by my personal hero and then-?senator Joe Biden in 2003.
It’s hard admitting that someone you like so much could be so wrong.
But the law — now called the Illicit Drugs Anti-Proliferation Act — is actually leading to deaths it was meant to prevent.
MDMA is known as ecstasy or molly to most college students.
It’s a prominent part of rave/electronic dance music culture — just ask any of your friends who attended ?music festivals in the summer.
Nash Jenkins of The Atlantic summarizes ecstasy’s effects in his 2013 piece on EDM and MDMA.
“‘Rolling,’ as the new ravers call the high, is a state of prolonged euphoria, intimacy and kinesis: the conditions encouraged by a pulsing beat, a rococo of colored lights and a setting that makes rubbing up against dozens of people tough to avoid,” he said in the piece.
Music festivals and clubs are thus meccas for the many people that find themselves in the EDM subculture. It’s also these very same places the RAVE Act has targeted.
The law threatens individuals and businesses with fines up to $250,000 and 20 years in prison for “knowingly opening, maintaining, managing, controlling, renting, leasing, making available for use, or profiting from any place” where patrons use or ?distribute drugs.
Out of fear of being held responsible under the law, club owners and festival promoters are weary to provide services that can help keep their partygoers safe.
These include amenities like cool-down rooms or free water that can actually save lives.
In August of 2013, a ?sophomore at the University of Virginia died of a heatstroke while attending an EDM ?festival in Washington, D.C.
Unknown to some ecstasy users, the drug interferes with the body’s temperature ?regulation.
But one can’t help to wonder if something as ?trivial as free water could have prevented the death of the 19-year-old.
Yes, taking ecstasy can be dangerous.
But even more dangerous are laws like the RAVE Act that criminalizes keeping ?partygoers safe.
There’s a big difference ?between truly addressing an issue and just doing something for the moral high we get from saying we did ?something.
That drug is called bad policy. And it can kill.
edsalas@umail.iu.edu
