LA EDM Rave Deaths Prompt Renewed Harm Reduction Calls
Three young revellers died at Los Angeles hip-hop/ pop/ EDM rave Hard Summer last week, provoking renewed calls to ban raves as well as pleas to relax legislation to normalize harm reduction measures.
“The drastic answer will be to ban events, which won’t keep young people any safer and it definitely won’t end drug use. It will only push it back into the underground,” Missi Wooldridge, chief of festival safety consultants Healthy Nightlife told the LA Times.
“If harm reduction doesn’t become the norm at events, we won’t have any events,” she predicted. (LA Times)
Amend The RAVE act founder Dede Goldsmith, 60, whose daughter Shelley died after taking ecstasy at a Dada Life show in Washington DC in 2013, also called on authorities to act in an LA Weekly article which asked ‘Is a misguided law making EDM festivals less safe’. (LA Weekly )
Writing on https://www.amendtheraveact.org Ms Goldsmith explained she started her campaign after learning her daughter’s death could have been prevented with information provided to revellers rather than Prohibition.
“Her death was not an overdose. Rather, it resulted from a combination of MDMA and dehydration after dancing for hours in a hot, overcrowded environment, which ultimately led to hyperthermia or heat stroke. It can happen to anyone,” she said.
“Most medical emergencies that occur at EDM events are the result of heat stroke,” she continued.
“MDMA and other stimulant drugs increase a person’s risk of heat stroke. However, when heat stroke occurs, other factors are almost always involved, such as a hot environment, engaging in aerobic activity like dancing, and a lack of access to drinking water.”
“In fact, MDMA-related fatalities are rarely the result of overdoses. They most often result from a combination of environmental factors leading to heat stroke. Heat stroke can even occur when a person hasn’t consumed any drug at all,” she concluded,