For this week’s blog, I am choosing to write about the rave culture. Raves are where ecstasy is mainly taken, and I am interested to find background information about it.

Raves originated in Europe in the 1980's where ecstasy was slowly being to be abused. A rave was when thousands of people gathered around techno music and they were held either outside or in large warehouses. After a short amount of time, raves were then moved into established clubs and to the police were known as "Drug Taking Festivals." Later in the 1980's, raves moved into the United States with big entertainers and promoters. In the mid 1900's, raves were spoken of in chat rooms heavily, and it was known that dance clubs had an extreme growth and the usage of ecstasy had increased. People found out that they didn't have to be on drugs to go to raves, but then things like rape, property damage, drug sales and pharmaceutical division took place.

Raves are advertised by fliers, papers, telephone, radio, the internet, and some audio stores. They advertise the headliners, which are dj's, bands, and/or groups. At a rave, it includes loud techno, huge bass speakers, psychedelic lights, videos, smoke, fog, fire, and sparks. A rave usually consists of a large dance room, or maybe more depending on how big the capacity is, which is accompanied with a "cool down room" as well as a VIP room. If you want to be a part of the VIP room, you have to buy more expensive tickets. Curfew restrictions have changed due to raves being held at random times such as 6:00pm-4:00am. Odd things kids use at raves are: Vicks vapor rub, menthol nasal inhalers, eye drops, surgical masks, glow sticks (because peoples' eyes shake when they're on ecstasy and seeing the lights intensify the feeling) lollipops, pacifiers (because people grind their teeth, and if they don't want to chew up their mouth, pacifiers are in need) water (it's easily to get dehydrated) and drug testing kits (because people go there sober looking for drugs, and they don't want to buy bunks ones.)

MDMA usage has increased so much it's inevitable to try to cease it. The security and police at raves have ignored the drug use and mainly worry about the distribution of drugs, and weapons.
The only way people get caught at raves is if the police have some suspicion they're selling drugs or they see someone take a pill or inject something into them selves.

I'm glad I researched this because it's really interesting and if I knew how to put a video of one up here I would. Raves sound extremely out of hand and dangerous.




"DEA Ongoing Programs, Shoulder-to-Shoulder Press Conferences, Raves." PE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" Welcome to the United States Department of Justice. Ed. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Web. 16 Dec. 2009. .