Arman Sharif: Preventing more tragedy following HARD Summer Musical Festival deaths

2014, one death. 2015, two deaths. 2016, three deaths.

The numbers spell a grim trajectory for HARD Summer Music Festival, an annual event held two weeks ago that attracted nearly 150,000 attendees an hour east of Los Angeles.

Until HARD Summer 2016, no single U.S. rave held by LA-based companies over the last decade saw three or more deaths, according to recently released data from the Los Angeles Times.

According to the same data, HARD’s uptick in calamities seems to be just one part of a larger trend. Drug-related deaths and hospital visits disproportionately plague the electronic dance music scene, which has seen at least 24 deaths, including an 18-year-old UCLA student last year. If the beleaguered scene is exceptionally dangerous compared to other kinds of festivals, HARD Summer has proven even more dangerous relative to this exception, warranting further scrutiny of the festival’s safety precautions: If autopsy reports attribute this year’s deaths to drug use, HARD will have seen almost 20 percent of these drug-related deaths since 2006.

But calls to simply ban raves, or relocate them elsewhere, will never prove a sound tactic for preventing these tragedies. A combination of worried county officials, overburdened medical doctors and a need for larger venues has already pushed rapidly growing events eastward out of LA. HARD over the years has moved from LA proper, to east LA County, until ultimately reaching this year’s location in the Inland Empire. The deaths continue.

Putting culpability on rave-goers or citing personal responsibilities of attendees has become an easy cop-out from the problem, a complacency that dangerously overlooks other lethal factors that will perpetuate these deaths and medical emergencies. We should not accept loss of life as inevitable collateral damage when other countries have implemented successful safety measures in their own festivals.

How we approach safety and drug use at raves needs to change. By framing the issue as germane to public health instead of criminality, collaborative efforts from law enforcement, lawmakers, medics and harm-reduction nonprofits can mitigate these risks that seem to have become inherent to the EDM festival. And if students are going to use, they should familiarize themselves with unbiased resources like dancesafe.org that can ultimately make their night or a friend’s safer with basic harm-reduction techniques.

For an example of possible festival-safety models to adopt, we can look to our northern neighbor. Some Canadian venues have already had stellar harm-reduction paradigms in place for almost 15 years, soliciting the help of different nonprofit harm-reduction organizations. Shambhala Music Festival and other Canadian EDM events have implemented measures such as establishing “safe havens,” cooling zone areas and information centers on festival grounds. The presence of these amenities further serves to create a positive, nonjudgmental climate where rave-goers are more transparent with medics and less afraid to seek out help in emergency situations.

With security measures to enter venues already stringent, another wise structural move in festival organization would be the incorporation of on-site drug-adulterant testing to test for harmful impurities in drugs. Speaking to the efficacy of on-site drug testing, spokesperson Chloe Sage from nonprofit ANKORS said that among pill and powder testing in a single year of Shambhala, nearly a third of substances tested did not match what they were perceived as.

And in just less than 20 years of existence, Shambhala has seen only one drug-related death. These efforts ultimately put less stress on surrounding hospitals and, most importantly, can save lives.

These harm-reduction models – which can be also be found in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. – all assert that safety fundamentally takes precedence over legality but still contend zero-tolerance for attendees who are found using. Amnesty is provided in areas where drugs are tested, and those under the influence of drugs receive medical attention without fear of repercussions, but those caught in possession or using would still be subject to ejection from the venue and consequent law enforcement measures.

HARD allegedly amped up its own safety measures significantly in response to last year. However, reports persisted of everything from inadequately equipped medical tents and inefficient water distribution, to sets scheduled during sweltering daytime heat and inaccessibility of emergency vehicles due to congested traffic, especially concerning as one of the deaths occurred in the parking lot.

Regarding water distribution, Maggie Shi, a rising third-year sociology student who attended day two of the festival, said, “It’s a small detail that makes a big difference,” citing cumbersome faucet systems compared to other events and unreasonably long lines in the hot weather. “HARD just hasn’t been making the improvements that they should.”

The ideal situation is that no one does drugs to begin with. However, enacting event bans to stymie the massive, multibillion-dollar EDM industry and otherwise assuming a model of abstinence in addressing drug problems, simply begets demand for underground events. Underground raves translate to highly unregulated venues with lax security, overcrowding and even more rampant drug use.

But the main obstacle inhibiting nearly any proactive measures by promoters, be it disseminating informational pamphlets that indicate drug risks and overdose warning signs, or providing on-site drug-adulterant testing kits, lies with the problematic Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003, also referred to as the RAVE Act. Sponsored by then-Senator Joe Biden, the act threatens to punish the mere acknowledgment of drug use on event premises, causing promoters to shy away from enacting drug-related harm-reduction measures at their venues. The question becomes whether this act is indeed protecting lives or inhibiting progressive measures to address a real issue of drug prevalence.

Until the legislation is revamped, an abstinence model toward drug use will persist, impeding promoters from implementing larger-scale harm-reduction measures at their festivals. A petition has started on amendtheraveact.org to urge congressmen to change the act’s language.

Looking beyond the negative, in any festival I’ve attended I’ve met overwhelmingly kind and open-minded people, and a sentiment of camaraderie permeates festival-goers in a way wholly unique to the scene. There is a niche for sober people and they enjoy the events, contrary to stereotypes.

But these deaths are a devastating damper. Just less than a year ago, many in attendance at Bruin Bash tearfully watched UCLA dance team ACA Hip Hop perform its tribute to Tracy Nguyen, a fondly remembered UCLA student who died after attending HARD Summer 2015.

Stigmatizing EDM events as drug-abuse havens – without embedding any actionable solutions into our criticisms – entrenches us deeper in failing to address some of these problems with solutions. This year, these solutions might have allowed three young people to still be alive with us today.