RAVE Act Stifles Businesses
... The only thing that stands in the way of Saint Louis becoming a center for the arts is something called the RAVE act. The RAVE (Reducing Americans Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act was passed January 24th, 2003 in an unrelated child abduction bill called the Amber Alert (S151) by a 92 to 0 vote. Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) first introduced the RAVE Act and was able to sneak it into the Amber Alert bill, even after two of the original sponsors withdrew their support for the bill. The RAVE Act is draconian legislation that makes venue owners and promoters of any concert, party, rave, fundraiser, or protest responsible if one of the attendees uses an illegal drug. ... There are also two bills in congress: the RAVE Act 2, also known Ecstasy Awareness Act (HR 2962) and the CLEAN-UP Meth Act (HR 834) which will allow the DEA and police more power to shut down events which might potentially have drug use. In section 305 of the CLEAN-UP (Clean, Learn, Educate, Abolish, Neutralize, and Undermine Production) Meth Act, it makes it a federal crime punishable for up to nine years in prison for promoting "any rave, dance, music, or other entertainment event that takes place circumstances where the promoter knows or reasonably ought to know that a controlled substance will be used of distributed". ... The Ecstasy Awareness Act reads very similarly, whereby a promoter can be jailed for "profiting momentarily from a rave or similar electronic dance event knowing or having reason to know that some attendees will use drugs.