Pubdate: Mon, 24 Apr 2000
Source: Maclean's Magazine (Canada)
Section: Cover Story
Copyright: 2000 Maclean Hunter Publishing Ltd.
Contact:  777 Bay Street, Toronto ON, M5W 1A7 Canada
Fax: (416) 596-7730
Website: http://www.macleans.ca/
Forum: http://www.macleans.ca/scripts/WebX.exe?macforum-
Author: Susan Oh with Ruth Atherley In Vancouver

RAVE FEVER

Raves Are All The Rage, But Drugs Are Casting A Pall Over Their Sunny 
Peace-And-Love Ethos

It's 2:30 a.m. on a Saturday night, and Amanda Mondoux is just hitting her 
party stride. All smiles and a swirl of flapping clothes and damp ponytail, 
the 17-year-old is swaying like someone in a voodoo trance, brandishing 
glow sticks to carve arcs of light through the shooting lasers. Amanda, a 
Grade 12 student, is among some 7,500 young people -- a motley crowd 
dressed in brightly coloured "fun" fur, pants that hang like sacks and 
baseball caps -- gathered to dance till morning in a cavernous Toronto 
exhibition hall. The sea of grinning faces and flailing arms bobs in sync 
with the jackhammer beats. Door-sized speakers pump out music so loud that 
it registers more through the soles of the feet than the numbed eardrums.

Hours later, awash in glitter makeup and sweat, Amanda visits the "chill" 
section, a rest area just quiet enough for conversation. She and the other 
young people greet old friends and make new ones. Modern-day flower 
children, the kids exchange not just nods and handshakes but also hugs, 
kisses, massages, glow-in-the-dark toys, bracelets and candy. Then, in a 
corner of the women's washroom, Amanda introduces herself to a chubby 
15-year-old girl named Max.

"Hey, what's up?" says Amanda. "How long you been partying?"

"It's my second party," Max replies, adding, "I had to sneak out of a 
window. My mom thinks I'm still home."

"No way! For real?" Amanda groans and gives her another hug. They exchange 
e-mail addresses.

It all seems sweetly mischievous. But then Amanda asks, "Are you dosing?" 
- -- rave-speak for "Have you taken drugs?" -- which draws a nod from Max.

That many kids like Amanda and Max dose is the foremost concern of parents, 
police and legislators now that raves are an entrenched -- and growing -- 
part of youth culture. With the increased popularity of the all-night 
parties has come increased consumption of rave drugs, most notably the 
amphetamine-like substance MDMA, known as ecstasy or "E". Their use is by 
no means confined to raves -- those stimulants can be found at concerts, 
nightclubs and many private parties. But wherever they are taken, they can 
be deadly. Ecstasy has been implicated in at least 14 Canadian deaths in 
the past two years -- 10 in Ontario, three in British Columbia and one in 
Halifax. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 43, but most were in their 
20s. One of the latest was 21-year-old Allan Ho, a business student at 
Toronto's Ryerson Polytechnic University, who collapsed at a rave in a 
former shoe factory last Oct. 10. Traces of MDMA were found in his body. A 
coroner's inquest into his death beginning on May 3 will look at overall 
safety issues surrounding raves.

Many more kids have become sick from rave drugs. Earlier this month in 
Edmonton, at a rave at Northlands Sportex attended by more than 5,000 
people, eight partyers suffered seizures and had to be taken to hospital.

Because of the drugs, because of the inherently worrisome aspect of kids 
staying up all night, far from parental scrutiny, "rave" has become one of 
those red-flag words. "Oh, my God, I worry to death what goes on at those 
things," says 44-year-old Janet Cacchioni, a marketing co-ordinator in 
Vancouver whose 18-year-old daughter, Holly, goes to raves. "I know all the 
trouble I got into at her age, but I also know that nothing could have 
stopped me -- and I expect nothing will stop her."

Like the rock festivals of the Sixties and Seventies, raves are one-off 
celebrations of youthful exuberance, gatherings of the idealistic tribe. 
They draw anywhere from hundreds to thousands, most between the ages of 15 
and 29, to party to electronic music played and sometimes created by DJs 
using synthesizers and turntables. Much like their hippie predecessors, 
ravers preach peace, love and unity, and eschew violence. Unlike the 
counterculturists of yore, they frown on alcohol. "You can develop a sense 
of community," observes 26-year-old Will Chang, a corporate lawyer in a 
downtown Toronto law firm who's been going at least once a month for the 
past four years. Chang, also a founding member of the Toronto Dance Safety 
Committee, which helped set up protocols for the safe operation of raves, 
says they "have made me more open-minded and accepting of others -- no one 
cares about colour, sex or age."

Some ravers, however, believe the scene is losing its joy and innocence. 
They cite commercialization, profiteering venue owners creating unsafe 
conditions, and the gangs that have taken control of rave drugs, adding 
more lethal substances to the psychedelic menu. "There's no vibe anymore," 
complains Matt Whalley, a 20-year-old Toronto DJ, referring to a sense of 
positive energy and goodwill. "I remember a time when I'd go there and just 
feel happy -- no drugs, just the music, and everybody was happy."

In trouble or not, raves are common in major cities across the nation. 
There are parties almost every Saturday in Toronto, considered by many 
devotees to be the rave capital of North America. Last Halloween, in the 
largest rave ever in Canada, about 16,000 gathered at a Toronto 
entertainment complex. Those events attract people from as far away as 
Wisconsin and New York City. Meanwhile, ravers can dance till dawn most 
weekends in the Vancouver area, Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal and Halifax, 
and less often in smaller locales. Yet the events still draw only a tiny 
fraction of young Canadians. A recent Angus Reid survey into youth trends 
and values found that five per cent of 3,500 subjects aged 16 to 29 had 
attended one or more raves in the past year, and only one per cent went to 
them on a regular basis. Applied to the overall population, those findings 
mean roughly 50,000 Canadians are committed ravers.

The numbers are substantial enough, however, for raves to be the focus of 
big business, both legitimate and illicit. With tickets running from $25 to 
$50, rave organizers stand to net -- or lose -- as much as $40,000 from one 
event alone. Raves have also spawned numerous spinoff enterprises, 
including shops specializing in rave music and garb.

Trafficking in ecstasy and other rave drugs, meanwhile, has become a 
virtual epidemic. By no means are all those pills, vials and capsules being 
consumed at raves, but their association with the all-night parties -- and 
the deaths -- have made raves a hot-button issue in municipal politics 
across the country. Vancouver and Toronto have both struck committees to 
help regulate raves, and Calgary is considering doing the same. Toronto 
raves must now adhere to safety protocols and guidelines pertaining to 
water, security and numbers, though they are difficult to enforce.

"In many ways, the concerns raised over the rave scene are not that much 
different than for rock concerts in the 1970s," says Edward Adlaf, a 
research scientist at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health in Toronto. 
Adlaf maintains it's a myth that everyone who attends raves is heavily into 
hard drugs, citing his organization's ongoing study of drug use in middle- 
and high-school students, which found that 57 per cent of students who had 
attended a rave in the past year had used cannabis but no other illegal 
substance. But two-thirds of those who had been to a rave are heavier drug 
users than non-ravers. And 4.4 per cent of all the students surveyed had 
taken ecstasy in the past year. He does concede, however, that the study, 
based on voluntary disclosure, comes with a degree of underreporting.

Meanwhile, 30 per cent of the students in Adlaf's study had had one 
heavy-drinking episode in the past four weeks alone. And he notes that 
young people are far more likely to cause themselves short-or long-term 
harm with the much more pervasive drugs tobacco and alcohol. Despite the 
far greater risks involved with alcohol abuse, Adlaf is nonetheless very 
concerned about ravers buying drugs increasingly cut with poisonous 
chemicals, or mixing substances to create a lethal dose. He also notes that 
illegal crowding and a lack of running water at many raves puts kids at 
risk. Water, experts say, is crucial. Without it, a person cannot control 
the body heat generated by rave drugs and dancing, and the liver and 
kidneys can shut down. Until recently in Toronto, some landlords who had 
maintained the right to sell water would cut off the water supply and 
air-conditioning in order to maximize sales.

Informed kids like Amanda make sure to drink constantly, convinced that it 
will protect them. "And I only do E," she says, taking a break from playing 
with her tongue stud. "I don't touch any of the dirty stuff." She's 
referring to drugs like gamma hydroxy-butyric acid (also known as GHB), one 
of the so-called date-rape drugs, and Ketamine, an animal tranquillizer 
known as "Special K." Highly addictive crystal methamphetamine, a type of 
speed also called "ice," has also become popular. With such drugs, the trip 
from euphoria to overdose can be swift -- especially when kids combine 
substances, as they often do. "I don't like the e-tards," says 18-year-old 
Chris Pettitt as he drags on a marijuana joint and points to some kids 
lying on the floor. "They're the people who take too much drugs and act 
stupid." Says an indignant Amanda: "People have offered me Special K, and 
I'm like, 'Cat tranquillizers? Do I look like a cat to you? No way.' "

Those dangers aside, ravers protest that their culture is about the music 
and the love-fest factor, not drugs. "I found a family at raves," says 
Becky, a 19-year-old Toronto student who attended her first one in 1994. 
Taken into foster care at age 12, she says she kept going because of the 
accepting environment. But for a few years, Becky took ecstasy every other 
week, and she still indulges every couple of months. "I respect myself and 
my body," she says, "but everybody does something that's bad for them."

Given the rave-drug equation, many parents simply forbid their children 
from going. Others -- baby boomers who remember the excesses of the Sixties 
and Seventies -- believe it's pointless to try to deny young people their 
own tribal celebrations, or even their own drugs. Rebecca Ientile started 
to accompany her three children (Chris, 20, Kathleen, 17, and Ashley, 15) 
to raves five months ago. "At least I know where my kids are," says the 
43-year-old Toronto single mother, who owns a landscaping company. "I know 
what they do and what they're on. We've sat down as a family and discussed 
it. As long as everything is in moderation and we're open about it, I'm not 
worried." Ientile is quick to point out raves' positive aspects. "The kids 
are wonderful. There's never any fights or bullying. Everyone's friendly 
and respectful of one another."

Rose Ker, a federal civil servant, sometimes accompanies daughter Danielle, 
17, to raves, where the teen and her best friend, Meghan Shepherd, have for 
the past two years operated a booth selling jewelry, toys and clothing they 
make themselves. "I was amazed," the 40-year-old mother says of her first 
rave experience. "Usually kids can be so judgmental and cruel to each 
other, but there was none of that. There seemed no barriers. It reminded me 
of the hippie age."

Many ravers savour the self-expression that is central to the culture. 
So-called candy ravers cultivate a childlike look, dressing in bright 
colours and big hats and decking themselves with toys and candy. "Liquid 
kids" wear white gloves and move in a fluid, mime-like fashion. Dancing at 
raves is less regimented than at clubs: people tend not to pair off as they 
move in quirky, even comical, ways. The clothes tend to be fun and 
comfortable rather than sexually provocative.

Sociologist Tim Weber, who authored a 1999 study on raves for Toronto's 
Centre for Addiction & Mental Health, notes that today's teens are looking 
for positive experiences to offset the comparatively stressful climate 
they've grown up in. "I was surprised at the number of kids in high school 
who saw raves as mini-vacations away from daily stressors," says Weber, who 
is now working for the pollster Angus Reid. "Some enjoyed being allowed to 
act like small children, doing things like wearing costumes, eating candy 
and playing with toys." Raised by done-it-all, seen-it-all boomers, they 
are also the generation that grew up with latchkey-ism, AIDS, the dominance 
of clothing brands and the pressure to start planning a career during 
adolescence. Jessica Hafekost, a 19-year-old Toronto salesclerk, says of 
the first rave party she and a friend attended four years ago: "We walked 
in and saw people dressed and just moving in ways we'd never seen before. 
There was a bubble machine, toys and tubing on the ceiling filled with 
luminescent green goo -- a fantasy quality to the whole thing. Where else 
are you going to see that?"

Shawn Parsons, now 33, has worked in security since he was 15, first in 
clubland, and since 1993, at raves with his own security company. "At a bar 
on any given night, you can guarantee a member of my staff will be 
physically attacked," says the burly Toronto father of three preteen 
children. "With ravers, that just doesn't happen. The parties attract the 
same group of people as they always have: intelligent, respectful kids who 
feel like outsiders in the real world."

Often, raves get an undeservedly bad rap because of confusion over what 
they are. A Vancouver shooting in early February, reported to be at a rave, 
in fact occurred outside a Chinese new year party at a banquet hall, and 
was gang-related. "What you're seeing is a knee-jerk reaction where they're 
calling everything a rave," says Sgt. Steve Clark, in charge of downtown 
special events for Toronto police. Meanwhile, conventional nightclubs don't 
necessarily fare any better in terms of safety. Last year, the 
1,800-capacity Toronto club The Guvernment was the source of 37 emergency 
calls on Friday and Saturday nights -- 24 medical problems, seven acts of 
violence and six accidental overdoses. At the Toronto rave attended by 
16,000 last Halloween, there was just one emergency call when a table fell 
on a person's leg.

At 7:30 a.m., Amanda is waiting for friends at the coat check as orange 
sunlight filters into the hall. The music is still loud, but most of the 
few hundred kids remaining have put on their coats and are dancing their 
way across the trash-strewn floor towards the exit. Amanda and her pals are 
about to go to one of their houses to talk or listen to music as they come 
down off the drugs. Soon, there will be another rave, another all-nighter. 
"I won't become a bum and do this when I get old, like 26," she shrugs. 
"But for now this is what it's about."

An inquiry into the agony of ecstasy

Kieran Kelly's death got the most headlines, but Allan Ho's is considered 
the most typical. Both of the 21-year-old Ontarians had been to raves, and 
both had taken the drug ecstasy. The bookish Kelly, a native of Brampton, 
disappeared last summer from an outdoor rave held near Sauble Beach, a 
popular Lake Huron holiday spot 250 km northwest of Toronto. For a month, 
his anguished father carried on a highly publicized search -- until Kelly's 
body was finally found in dense bush almost two kilometres from the rave 
site. Ho, a business student at Ryerson Polytechnic University, collapsed 
at a Toronto rave in a former shoe factory last October. Rushed to 
hospital, he lay unconscious for 14 hours, and then died.

The two deaths added to the provincial coroner's growing file on 
ecstasy-related deaths. By the end of 1999, the toll in Ontario, home to 
more raves than any other province, had reached nine for the year (with 
just one other in the rest of Canada). That number marked the sudden 
emergence of a new way of dying -- in 1998 Ontario had recorded only one 
ecstasy-related death, its first ever -- and prompted the coroner's office 
to call an inquest, scheduled to begin in Toronto on May 3. The inquest 
will focus on Ho, because the coroner considers him the most representative 
of the nine Ontario cases: all were healthy males between 19 and 28, and 
most died at raves in the Toronto area. But the inquest will also look at 
the entire urban rave scene and its dangers.

Adding to deputy chief coroner Jim Cairns's sense of urgency is the fact 
that two more such deaths have already been confirmed in 2000 and others 
suspected, putting the province on track to match or exceed last year's 
total. "Look, I know this is not the most dangerous thing going on," Cairns 
allows. "Many more young people die from alcohol every year. But it is new, 
it's continuing, and we need to collect what we know and make it public."

That means Ho's inquest will have "a broad mandate," Cairns says. "It will 
examine not just his death, but the larger questions about ecstasy, by 
hearing testimony from police about the problems they deal with, and from 
medical professionals about what they see in emergency wards on weekends." 
It's an exercise in public health and safety that Cairns hopes will help 
keep others from the fate of Kieran Kelly and Allan Ho.

Wild ones through the ages

Some of the youth movements that have captivated kids -- and, in most 
cases, scandalized parents -- over the past 80 years:

FLAPPERS 1920S

Music: Dixieland

Look: short, bobbed hair and slim-cut dresses for women, fedoras for men

Drug of choice: alcohol and roll-your-own cigarettes

Ritual: dance-hall parties and the Charleston

SWING KIDS 1940S

Music: big-band jazz

Look: sleekly coiffed hairdos, fitted blouses and skirts for women, pleated 
trousers and sports jackets, or the clean-cut GI Joe look for men

Drug of choice: alcohol and cigarettes

Ritual: music-hall parties and cutting a rug with the jive and the jitterbug

ROCK 'N' ROLLERS 1950S

Music: Elvis Presley and other early rockers, Paul Anka

Look: bouffant hairdos and bobby socks for women, greasy ducktails and 
white T-shirts for men

Drug of choice: alcohol and cigarettes

Ritual: parties in darkened rec rooms, group excursions to drive-ins and 
pool halls, high-school dances

HIPPIES 1960S

Music: folk and acid rock, the Beatles

Look: tie-dyed garments, ethnic wear, jeans, bell-bottoms, miniskirts

Drug of choice: just about every legal and illegal mind-altering drug 
going, especially cannabis, LSD and alcohol

Ritual: love-ins, happenings, rock concerts and festivals

DISCO DIEHARDS 1970S

Music: mindless dance music

Look: platform shoes, loud shirts, big collars, halter tops and hot pants

Drug of choice: cannabis, cocaine, heroin, alcohol

Ritual: dancing till you dropped at discotheques

PUNKERS LATE-1970S TO MID-1980S

Music: the Sex Pistols and other punk rock

Look: safety pins, mohawks, studded leather

Drug of choice: cannabis, heroin, speed, alcohol

Ritual: concerts and mosh pits

HIP-HOP KIDS 1980S TO THE PRESENT

Music: rap music

Look: extremely baggy sportswear, sometimes worn backwards

Drug of choice: cannabis, crack

Ritual: parties, concerts
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