Lawmakers Targeting the Ecstasy of Raves

Dawn was approaching when the underground wizard stepped center stage at the State Palace Theatre to survey his electronic wonderland. Laser lights strafed the grand old chandeliers overhead, and deafening machine music rattled the opera boxes. The floor was packed with young, sweaty dancers.

“Great crowd,” J. Donnie Estopinal said. And then, with a boyish smile, he added: “I wonder which ones are the cops.”

The gangly 32-year-old hefted a chugging smoke machine and aimed it toward the audience of more than 3,300. If there were any undercover drug agents in the Canal Street theater--and there almost certainly were--Estopinal was suddenly gone before their eyes, vanished in a billowing white cloud. It was a rare moment of low visibility for the promoter whose parties have been ground zero for a federal excursion into the rave world.

The newest front in that campaign is a U.S. Senate bill that has wide support on Capitol Hill. The legislation has a catchy name--the RAVE Act, which stands for “Reducing America’s Vulnerability to Ecstasy.”

The act would tweak a 16-year-old federal drug law, originally crafted to prosecute owners of crack houses, by expanding its definition of a site devoted to drug enterprise to include one-time events and outdoor gatherings. The law would make it a felony to house events that knowingly profit from a drug culture. Its clear model has been last year’s case, brought here, of the United States of America vs. Estopinal.

“I still can’t believe it sometimes, when I think of what’s happened,” Estopinal said. “They told me these federal drug laws were going to put me in prison for 20 years. But not for buying drugs, not for selling drugs, not for using drugs. They never said I did any of that. They said I put on raves. They looked around for somebody to pound, and I was the lucky guy.”

Estopinal said his only knowledge of drugs at his raves is the “same common-sense knowledge that tells me there’s drugs at concerts and clubs everywhere.” The government case against Estopinal fizzled, and charges against him were eventually dropped, but that has not deterred authorities from using the New Orleans case as a template. The campaign has sent a chill not only through the electronic dance world, but also the ranks of civil liberty advocates.

“The State Palace case was the opening battle, and it’s absolutely critical in understanding the RAVE Act, which now appears to be a priority in the Senate with a very frightening prospect of passing,” said Graham Boyd, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project. “What’s extraordinary here is the government recasting of the drug laws to take an activity that has never been considered criminal before and then criminalize it. And it’s an activity very intertwined with free expression.

“Basically,” the attorney said, “we’re talking about putting on a party.”

Not so, says Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), who introduced the RAVE Act and has taken a prominent role in Senate hearings over the last two years regarding Ecstasy and other club drugs.

“Despite what opponents of the bill would have you believe, promoters who sponsor events where people can dance in a safe, drug-free environment have nothing to fear from my bill,” Biden said. “My legislation is aimed at the promoters who seek to profit from knowingly putting their customers at risk.... Next week the problem may be country music bars or hip-hop clubs. Quite frankly, I don’t care what type of music is playing or what the venue is. What I do care about is the behavior of promoters who turn their events into drug dens.”

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Generational Conflict

While the RAVE Act and the prosecution of Estopinal are matters of law, a core question of the great debate is cultural and generational: Are raves about music or drugs?

Opponents of the RAVE Act say the law could be stretched to go after concert promoters who book reggae artists and sell marijuana-themed T-shirts, or venues that host jam bands in the Grateful Dead tradition and sell black-light posters.

The legal saga of the State Palace is a jumbled tale of British dance party traditions, Beltway politicking and a law originally written to nail shut the doors of urban drug havens.

In 1986, the “crack house” laws were created to help police fight the anonymous churn of cocaine houses. Dealers arrested in the morning were replaced by afternoon, so the law presented a more practical target in the property owners. The law made it a felony to knowingly house and profit from a drug enterprise.

In New Orleans in January 2001, a federal grand jury was asked: Are rave promoters really all that different from the property owners who collect cash for letting drug dealers set up shop under their roofs? The answer came in a sealed indictment against Estopinal and the owners of the State Palace.

The rave parties at this venue, which sits in a gritty commercial district on the fringe of the French Quarter, follow the familiar beats of those set up in clubs, outdoor fields and warehouses in Los Angeles, Miami, Berlin, Tokyo and beyond. The throbbing electronic music and pulsing psychedelic lights create sensory overload, and a crowd vibe prevails that could be viewed as neo-hippie. And, of course, there are drugs.

The effects of Ecstasy include euphoria, increased sensuality and a buzzing intensification of the senses--all of which are stoked by the rave atmosphere. But Ecstasy and other club drugs such as ketamine and GHB can also be hazardous for ravers who dance in crowded, broiling rooms for marathon parties. Body temperatures soar, hydration dips, kidneys can fail and seizures can set in.

When authorities came after Estopinal and the owners of the venue, Robert and Brian Brunet, they pointed to a parade of limp youngsters taken to hospitals. When he introduced the legislation, Biden cited Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that 400 teens attending State Palace raves had overdosed over a two-year period, a total hotly contested by Estopinal. There is no debate, however, that in 1998 the drug-related death of a 17-year-old girl who had been at a State Palace rave shifted the venue from local irritant to formal target.

In the months leading up to the grand jury, DEA undercover agents reported that they bought 13 grams of Ecstasy at eight State Palace raves. The government would argue that Estopinal and the Brunet brothers knew dealers were active at the raves.

The government also said the attributes of the State Palace raves pointed to complicity by Estopinal and the Brunets in a drug enterprise. Prosecutors argued that the venue sold items--such as glow sticks, baby pacifiers and mentholated inhalers--that are associated with club drug culture. Defense attorneys told Estopinal and the Brunets the case was an ominous one, and the defendants agreed tentatively to a plea bargain that would land them in prison for terms of one to two years. The American Civil Liberties Union, however, persuaded the men to fight the case.

ACLU attorney Boyd said this week that his organization’s efforts and negative media coverage sapped the government’s momentum in a case it hoped to close with a quick and precedent-setting plea.

The government did win a plea bargain, but it was a muted victory. All charges against Estopinal and the Brunets as individuals were dropped. Instead, the corporation that owned the State Palace entered a guilty plea on the crack house laws, accepted a $100,000 fine and agreed to a ban on items such as glow sticks.

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A Political Victory

The victory was undermined in several ways. In the days after the plea, a new corporation was created by the Brunets to secure their liquor license. The $100,000 fine has never been collected, Boyd said, and an ACLU civil suit on behalf of State Palace patrons and artists negated the ban on rave items. “It was a completely empty, face-saving victory that meant nothing legally,” he said. “But it did have meaning politically.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Al Winters, who handled the State Palace case, said Thursday he could not comment on the case, and he cited a pending government appeal to reinstate the rave items ban. He did offer one insight: “Once we executed search warrants at the State Palace Theatre, the overdoses in the local hospitals went from 12 every time they had a rave to none. None. That’s why we got into the case. It was to try to stop the overdoses, and so far we’re successful.”

DEA Director Asa Hutchinson this week said the New Orleans case was a worthwhile prosecution, but he said the “important tool” of the Crack House Law would be more potent in cases in which promoters actually deal drugs or have more traceable ties to dealers.

“We’re not trying to shut down raves, but we will, and we should, put on notice any rave promoter who is going to facilitate, encourage or engage in Ecstasy distribution that we’re coming after them,” Hutchinson said. “They’re taking advantage of parents, taking advantage of teenagers and doing a disservice to the music they purport to love.”

Security searches at the State Palace are more intense these days, and the wait in line can stretch to two hours. But few searches can stop smuggling completely. In a rear row of seats, three ravers who appeared to be in their early 20s huddled together as a fourth used a credit card to sort white powder on a small pane of glass illuminated by a glow stick.

That scene may be part of the ritual for some ravers, but Robert Brunet said the event is truly defined by the stage where, last weekend, DJs making as much as $3,000 an hour and flown in from as far away as Europe created sonic collages.

“If this were about drugs, we would get local [DJs], anybody, and just put them up there,” Brunet said. “That would be a lot easier. Kids wouldn’t drive 10 hours to get here, either. Those are stars up there.”

Edgy music scenes and drug culture have danced together for years, of course, from the smoky clubs of the Jazz Age to the tie-dyed trails of Woodstock and the bathroom lines of Studio 54. But Biden says that, no matter the name of the bill, this is legislation about drugs, not music events.

The RAVE Act, introduced in mid-June, has raced through the Senate process. Though ACLU attorney Boyd says he once viewed the bill as a political flare--shot up for attention but without real lasting heat--it now sits on the Senate’s consent calendar, meaning it could pass after the summer recess without debate. (There is no House version of the bill.)

The RAVE Act is given good odds by Hutchinson. “It’s a little bit early to predict, but it has a tremendous amount of support in Congress because of the concern about club drugs. And that concern will grow. We haven’t seen all the dimensions of this problem yet.... I think there’s very little public awareness of the problems of Ecstasy, and the education curve is enormous.”

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A Clouded Picture

Education is foiled by misinformation, however, and good data are hard to find in the swirl of raves. Drug use is the subject of wildly divergent estimates (from 10% of ravers to 90%, depending on whom you ask), and pegging the complicity of promoters in the drug trade may be a slippery matter.

Even the authorities have some fogginess about their own efforts. In a phone interview this week, Hutchinson said the New Orleans case was a success because, at least, the State Palace “no longer has raves, it’s been shut down.” When corrected, he asked, “Well, it’s not the same promoter, though, right?”

Last Saturday, getting ready to stage his latest rave amid the faded majesty of the State Palace, Estopinal flopped in a chair backstage and said that after his strange odyssey he is now embracing misinformation and trying to dance unnoticed in the shadows.

“I don’t use the D-word,” he said. “Look, I used to say, ‘Yes, to be honest, there is drug use at raves just like there is at the bars on Bourbon Street and at rock concerts and sporting events.’ And then [the prosecutors] pulled out the old interviews and said that showed I was aware of the drug dealers and was creating a place for them. It was crazy. So now? Well, now there are no drugs at raves.”