ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development of dance culture and outlines approaches to drug use, including the development of safer dancing guidelines. The recreational drug use of the 1990s has its place in a wider historical context. In a one-column article is crammed a wealth of information about how recreational drug use and its associated music have influenced our legal system, our attitudes to personal space, one might even say, sexuality, our attitudes towards alcohol and finally the television and newspaper media. The dance music club scene of is not a new phenomenon. Whatever the media might print or what politicians might banter about ‘new evils’ and ‘wars’, drug use and youth culture have been intertwined for decades. Whether for the health and well-being of a community, to worship, or explain the unexplainable, the occurrence and purpose of drug use has been ingrained into the social and cultural organisations of communities, folded into the complexities of dealing with everyday life.
