FIRST SIGNS THAT CRACKDOWN'S RUNNING OUT OF STEAM
AS ACLU WINS VICTORY IN NEW ORLEANS RAVE CASE!
The US Rave Crackdown began, with great fanfare, when federal prosecutors indicted the managers of New Orleans' State Palace Theater under an idiosyncratic reading of federal "crack house" laws.
Theater manager Robert Brunet, his brother Brian and rave promoter Donny Estopinal faced 25 years in prison for maintaining a place for the purpose of drug sales.
But with no evidence linking them with alleged
widespread ecstasy sales/use at the theater, the crack house charges fizzled. In a June plea bargain, one business run by Robert Brunet was required to ban rave culture accoutrements such as pacifiers, glow sticks and surgical masks from any future raves they held.
Last week, after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Drug Policy Litigation
Project filed a lawsuit challenging both these
restrictions and also door searches on 1st and 4th Amendment grounds, US District Court Judge G. Thomas Porteus granted a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the section of the plea agreement that banned glow sticks, pacifiers and other items.

"We're gonna glow like we never glowed before," rave performer Clayton Smith told the
New Orleans Times-Picayune. A participant in the lawsuit, Smith had told Judge Porteus that the Air Force drill team, of which he was a former member, used glow sticks in their formations. The techno fan told the judge he had invested countless hours in practice time for his performances at raves.

Also testifying was Emory University professor
Claire Sterk, an expert on teenage drug use.
She told the court the items in question did not fit the federal definition of drug paraphernalia, which "must directly facilitate drug use." Unlike syringes or crack pipes, the items associated with ecstasy and rave culture "obviously have no health consequences and don't facilitate drug use at all," she said.
Federal prosecutors attempted to rebut the
ACLU with, as a critical Times-Picayune editorial put it, "arguments that they themselves must have recognized as silly."

RAVE CULTURE - GET OUTA THE WAY IF YOU CAN'T LEND A HAND!