If true, this story is outragous (and frightening): in Billings, Montana, the DEA used the anti-drug RAVE act to prevent a benefit for pro-drug-legalization groups.

So the RAVE Act is used, not to oppose drug use, but to oppose the free speech of folks who disagree with anti-drug laws.

What is the RAVE Act? Technically known as the “Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act,” the RAVE Act makes it easier for the government to crack down on drug usage by fining or jailing any venue owner or organizer who “knowingly” provides a venue for using illegal drugs. It’s aimed at reducing drug use by cracking down on club owners and RAVE organizers.

So what’s the problem? Well, anyone who’s not an idiot “knows” that it’s always possible that someone at such an event - no matter how good your security is - will use a drug at some point. And if someone does, the club owner, event organizer or any employee - regardless of how hard they tried to keep drugs out of the club, or how good their intentions were - is criminally liable, and can potentially lose the business or even spend 20 years in prison.

Here’s how the law works in practice - from the ACLU (emphasis added):

Note that the RAVE Law does more than just punish business owners for their customers’ drug use. It actually punishes business owners for following sane, humane policies. Anything a club does to protect the health of its customers - such as providing a cool-off room, water, or having medical help available if a customer gets into trouble - is evidence of wrongdoing and could cause a club owner to lose his business (or worse). Anything directly related to drug use - such as distributing anti-drug literature, or safe usage information - is of course totally off-limits.

As the ACLU points out, “The provision will not eliminate drug use or raves – it will just drive them underground and discourage basic health precautions. It will have the perverse effect of making raves even more dangerous.”

We don’t know how dangerous MCMD. But we do know that unrated, unregulated clubs are dangerous. Are you looking for more kids to die in fires because they were dancing in illegal venues, where fire codes are not applied? Do you want kids suffering from an overdose to wait twice as long for an ambulance - if they ever get an ambulance at all - because the owner doesn’t dare have medical support on call? Do you want kids in raves to start suffering from heat stroke, because cool-off rooms and bottled water have effectively been outlawed? Then you’d better support the RAVE Act.

Mark Kleiman, responding to a post from Instapundit, argues that it’s possible that MDMA, also called ecstasy, will turn out to be harmful in some speculative fashion. Mark doesn’t have any proof that MDMA use is particularly harmful, mind you; he just thinks it’s possible that it will be bad news. Someday. Maybe.

Nor has the RAVE act (also called the “Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act”) been shown to provide “some measurable chance of reducing the size of what otherwise seems likely to be a serious problem.”

Mark doesn’t make any argument for why the RAVE act should be expected to significantly reduce MDMA use, or how the “measurable chance” should be measured. Lacking any plausible arguments or evidence, is there any compelling reason to suppose the RAVE act will do any good at all? People aren’t going to stop partying, or stop using drugs, because club owners face penalties. And as the ACLU’s State Palace example shows, even club owners who do everything possible to prevent drug use cannot keep drugs out of their clubs.

(It’s possible that Mark believes this law will totally shut down all RAVE venues, eliminating a major place for drug use, and thus reducing MDMA use. If that’s the strategy, why not just support a law outlawing dance clubs, period?)

Mark writes:

I think it is self-evident that punishing innocent people - even those innocent people who own clubs - is a harmful thing, which when possible should be avoided. It’s obvious that this law can and is being used to harm people who have tried, in good faith, to abide by drug laws. That such people will be harmed is not speculative; as the ACLU’s example shows, it actually happens.

Of course, no law is perfect; even homicide laws lead to some false arrests, but that’s no reason not to have laws against homicide at all.

However, unlike the harms of homicide, the harms of MDMA use are either relatively minor or speculative. (A small number of people do die from club drugs each year; according to the US government’s DAWN statistics - PDF link - there are less than five club-drug-related deaths annually in typical American cities. Although even one death is tragic, many more people die playing sports or pleasure-driving each year than die from MDMA).

Furthermore, it’s not at all self-evident that the speculative harms of MDMA are worse than the speculative harms of fully implementing the RAVE Act. How many kids will be denied safety information, or immediate medical care, because club owners are deterred from providing these things by the RAVE Act? Is anyone conducting a study to measure the long-term harms of needless dehydration due to water not being available in clubs?

In addition, this law is an attack on free speech. Rightly or wrongly, police associate certain styles of music - rave and hip-hop - with drug usage. This law provides club owners with an enormous motivation to censor the music kids actually prefer to listen to, preferring instead whatever music police departments are willing to approve of. But should police departments be de facto judges of what music can or cannot be played in clubs?

On balance, it seems that the speculative harms of having this law are just as bad as the speculative harms of not having the law.

Add to that, the known harm of this law: it is used to prosecute innocent business owners.

Since the speculative harms are balanced, while the known harm weighs against the RAVE Act, I think there’s “a serious argument that the Act as passed is worse than nothing.”

As for alternatives, I deny the implication that, lacking a better alternative, any law - no matter how illogical, harmful or repressive - is justified.

Nonetheless, if we assume - based on no persuasive evidence I’ve seen - that we must have a RAVE Act, it would be easy to write a better one. For instance, the RAVE Act could be amended to forbid prosecutors from using provision of water, health care, cool-off rooms, anti-drug or safe usage information, or any action that is intended to protect the health of patrons, as evidence against anyone under this law. That would preserve the law’s alleged benefits, while mitigating some of its harms.

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