ABSTRACT
On April 30, 2003, President George W. Bush signed into the law the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003,1 previously named the RAVE (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act (S. 2633, 107th). This was the third piece of legislation enacted since the start of the new millennium designed to target drug use and the nighttime dance scene. This law was the culmination of concerns which arose in the mid to late 1990s as a result of an increase in young people’s involvement in using ecstasy and attending rave parties. Given the upsurge in themedia publicity surrounding raves and club drugs, numerous claims makers (politicians, law enforcement, anti-drug associations, concerned parents, government agencies and local authority representatives) argued that the country faced a growing drug epidemic centered around raves. Issues of risk, threat, and danger dominated official discourses about raves and club drugs. In fact the two main Senate hearings on the problems of ecstasy in 2000 and 2001 were respectively titled “Ecstasy: Underestimating the Threat” and “America at Risk: The Ecstasy Threat.” According to politicians and law enforcement officials, steps needed to be taken quickly in order to curb the drug epidemic among young people and to protect a future “generation of leaders.”
