Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Is It Safe to Go Dancing?

The more enforcement you use to control the use and distribution of a drug, the more "underground" it will go. My grandfather used to tell me about the days when he'd be sitting in a saloon, and right on the counter would be marijuana cigarettes for anyone to smoke. Funnily enough, marijuana was not much used then; until the crack-down. We also went through prohibition and we all know how that turned out. So what happens when you crack down on drugs?They don't seem to go away! They just go more underground. (That fits right into the mentality of "us against them" or "screw the establishment, I'll do what I want.") If you consider the billions of dollars spent on "cracking down" on the drug trade, you'd think we'd have a reduction in drug use. Instead, we get the opposite effect. Why? Let's take the drug Ecstasy (MDMA-a highly addictive hallucinogenic stimulant which can be fatal). According to recent reports, there have been more arrests of its distributors. Ok, I think that's great! However, has that stopped other drugs from coming in? More importantly, has that lowered drug usage? Of course not. If you lower the supply of something, yet it is still marketed as if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, you wind up creating even more of a demand. And where there is a demand, ways will be figured out to supply that demand for profit. So what is the solution? If you ask Dance Safe, a nonprofit, "harm- reduction" organization promoting drug use within the "rave" (all-night dance parties) and nightclub community, you'll see that they claim to help kids use drugs safely. They provide pill-testing services for party goers to ensure their Ecstasy is "pure". They currently have chapters throughout the US and Canada manned by young volunteers from within the dance culture who, they say, have a sincere interest in bettering their communities and educating themselves and their peers on the safe use of drugs. Dance Safe feels that pill testing is an important harm reduction service that saves lives and reduces medical emergencies by helping Ecstasy users avoid fake and adulterated tablets that often contain substances far more dangerous than real ecstasy. What they fail to say is that there are few drugs which are more dangerous than Ecstasy. Kids have dies from it with a single use!And the Drug Policy Alliance I have mentioned in previous briefings considers Dance Safe to be a "life-saving activity". This brings us back to the original question: Why does cracking down on drugs seem to have the opposite effect? Our new video Xtasy The Real Story, Part 1, answers this question and more. You will be shocked at what gets uncovered in this new video. I can assure you that this is information you do not know and have not seen anywhere else. Even the most veteran counselors were not prepared for what they saw. This video is already turning kids' attitudes around on the subject of Ecstasy and drugs in general, with the highest success rate we have ever experienced!
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