The default reaction to the Rave bust in Utah from a number of people has been of the form "blah, blah, Republicans, blah, blah, Bush, blah, blah, Police State." This is more then a little annoying. Raves have been targetted federally by a bipartisan coallition led by Democrats. Yes, Virginia, Democrats have jack boots too.
In 2002 Democratic senators Biden, Leahy, and Durbin along with Republicans Grassley and Hatch proposed the Rave Act of 2002. Biden was the primary sponsor.
This law included a findings section, essentially a list of justifications, which is basically a collection of paranoid rantings that have little or no connection to reality. For example:
Many rave promoters go to great lengths to try to portray their events as alcohol-free parties that are safe places for young adults to go to dance with friends, and some even go so far as to hire off-duty, uniformed police officers to patrol outside of the venue to give parents the impression that the event is safe.
There is no way they might actually have a legitimate interest in hiring security guards!
That right there is the point at which you can tell the reporter at Fox had nary a clue about that which he speaks. Rave promoters have every incentive to have solid security at the events, simply because it keeps the loons who would otherwise be wearing illunimated bongs around their necks away from the venue. To decide that they couldn't possibly want security there makes a whole lot of assumptions about what rave promoters have in mind, and the most obvious assumption is that rave promoters want as many drugs on-site as possible. Aside from being ludicrous on the face of it (because where there's lots of drugs, there's generally lots of overdoses, which is very, very bad for a party) I suspect it constitutes a form of prior restraint. It treats party promoters as if it were a foregone conclusion that they're basically high-volume drug dealers. Anyone from the "rave scene" can tell you this is absolutely not the case, and if they'd step back for a moment and nicely ask a few people, the "scene" generally has no problems with pointing fingers at the few promoters who do get that idea that hosting a party just so they can sell drugs is okay.
Ravers despise junkies and recklessly destructive behaviour as much if not more than any other counter-culture, simply because of the splinter of people whose lives they've watched go down the tubes as a result of the aforementioned junkies and rapacious drug dealers.
