In 2010, around the time of the last raves held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, former venue officials made the argument the parties there were no different than beer-fueled American football games held there. At the Los Angeles Rams’ season-opening home match at the Coliseum last weekend, at least 158 people were hospitalized for heat-related issues. (Temperatures were in the 90s.) But there was one huge difference: nobody died.
Over the past 10 years there have been at least 25 drug-related deaths at parties hosted by just three LA-based rave promoters, the Los Angeles Times found. Parties such as Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) in Las Vegas have seen multiple drug-related deaths since moving there from the Coliseum in 2011. At Hard Summer this year, three patrons died. The cause is still under investigation. Last year two teenage girls died after attending Hard Summer. Both deaths were MDMA-related, coroner’s officials said. In the wake of these tragedies, and with a background of fewer venues willing to take risks on dance events, Hard announced it is not hosting its annual Day of the Dead festival in LA.
Like in London, where one of the world’s greatest dance music venues, Fabric, appears to be no more due to factors triggered by the drug-related death of two teenagers in August, Los Angeles is in the midst of a rave crisis. Almost all of the city’s rave deaths are ecstasy-related, according to coroner’s conclusions. Yet for more than 20 years the electronic dance music scene has been blaming everything but itself – the media, “bad batch” pills, lack of party skills – for its drug problem. MDMA deaths have been constant here since the dawn of the 90s, when British ex-pats organized some of the first American raves in Los Angeles. In 1999 five teens died when the car they were in plunged off a mountain road following a rave(Ecstasy was one of the main drugs found in the victims’ bodies).
Since those days the culture has returned to harm reduction as a means to combat the fatalities. DanceSafe, an organization that promotes health and safety within the electronic music community, believes ravers need a safe place to play where there’s plenty of free water, pill testing and space to cool down. Sounds reasonable. But pill testing, which has been embraced by some countries, can lead to a belief that ecstasy isn’t a cause in these deaths.
Even the most celebrated MDMA scientists, such as the University of California Los Angeles’ Charles Grob, say ecstasy is problematic and unpredictable in a party setting. In the past five years there have been government task forces, free water, increased security and age limits of 18 and older. In the late 00s, operators of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Cow Palace tried harm reduction and found no improvement, with multiple hospitalizations.
We’re fairly liberal in California. Marijuana is on the ballot this November and is likely to be fully legalized after 20 years of pioneering medical legitimacy. The so-called godfather of ecstasy, Sasha Shulgin, was a lifelong resident. We’re not opposed to fun. The important thing to acknowledge is that MDMA has a deadly record, like alcohol, heroin and cocaine. There are only two sure solutions when it comes to saving ravers’ lives: one, don’t hold raves. That’s not going to happen, and we don’t want it to. Two, make them 21 and older.
None of the 25 deaths happened at 21-and-older events. Last year, following the 2015 deaths, Hard Day of the Dead went 21-plus. Nobody died. Of course, the crowds, estimated at 20,000, were fractional. Hard Summer saw about 147,000 people through the turnstiles this year. Yes, some of the deceased over the years have been older than 21, but barely. When 20-year-old Kenani Kaimuloa died after attending EDC Vegas this year, her father, an Iraq combat veteran, told a local newspaper reporter that he had been waiting for her to come home that weekend “to give me her Father’s Day present”. If 21-and-older works, then, why isn’t it done more often?
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