Notes from "Chasing Dragons" (2008)

Chasing Dragons: Security, Identify and Illicit Drugs in Canada

by KYLE GRAYSON

University of Toronto Press, 2008


Author's Summary:

"Informed by Michel Foucault's conceptualizations of power and a Derridean ethos of deconstruction, this dissertation examines how Canadian national identity is constructed through the discourses and practices of security policy. By analysing Canadian responses to illicit drugs, the power relations that are present in the construction of threat, and the meanings that are attached to the illicit drug issue, it is demonstrated that these are all reflective of and reflected in the dominant understandings of what/who can be defined as Canadian.

"In taking a critical look at the discursive relations that transect discussions of race, culture, identity, medicine, law, and security within specific case studies, I map the popular representations that emerge which have reproduced a regime of truth that frames specific drugs as requiring prohibition and illicit drugs as a security issue writ large. By focussing on illicit drugs, an area of public security policy that is constructed as being above politics, I reveal the interconnected relationship between security and identity by evaluating the performatives of Canadian identity and threat, the forms of marginalization that they make possible, and their ethico-political ramifications for the Canadian body politic.

"The empirical case studies include an assessment of the biopolitics of Canada-US relations, a comparison of the processes by which the securitization of opium and khat became possible and their relationship to discourses of race, a genealogy of the body of the ‘Canadian’ drug user which explores the power relations constitutive of medical marijuana and proposed moves towards the decriminalization of marijuana possession, and a discussion of the politics of resistence utilized by Toronto's rave community after being identified as a threat by law enforcement authorities and why its strategy ultimately failed.

"Concluding reflections are provided on the categorization of Canadian illicit drug policy as progressive, the reproduction of power/relations in Canadian society, the kind of politics that these make possible, and prospects for transformation. As such, identity management is argued to be a central element of Canadian security policy that frames the ways in which the Canadian Self responds to its Others beyond issues directly related to illicit drugs."

Notes:

Introduction

The book opens with an image of Absolut Vodka advertisements – fusing vodka drinking to the idea of ‘Candian-ness.’

“Despite the well-known dangers of alcohol and alcohol consumption, [Abolut Vodka] was able to represent itself, and find room to be accepted, as a celebrated part of the Canadian experience to an extent that other recreational drugs from outside Canada could not.” (p.5)

“The guiding question, then, is how have competing ideas of security and Canadian identity managed to code particular practices as un-Canadian, thereby making it possible to pursue various forms of prohibition towards illicit drugs?” (p.5) 

• “While it is typically presumed that security considerations regarding the legality or illegality of intoxicants have been based on the scientific analysis of their physiological and social consequences, these decisions have been political decisions determined largely by the security dictates of establishing a distinct Canadian identity.” (p.5)
• “As such, state practices that have ostensibly been undertaken to physically secure the Canadian body politic and Canadian territoriality within various historical contexts should also be seen as moves that have secured the hegemonic conception of Canada and of ‘Canadianess.’” (p.5)

In Canada, Intoxicants = Foreign.

• “Since the passage of the Opium Act in 1908, a growing range of pharmaceutical substances have been incorporated into popular Canadian understandings of what should legitimately be considered security threats to the body politic and its unique ‘way of life.’” (p.6)
• “The project of combating the social scourges represented as naturally emanating from the chemical properties of these drugs, and from those said to have used them, has been able to commandeer vast amounts of resources, energies, and time.” (p.6)
• “Because of the seriousness of what have been seen as associated dangers, efforts have long been made to eliminate the production, distribution, and consumption of illicit drugs in Canadian society. Thus, within these processes of combating illicit drugs, both individual bodies and the Canadian body politic have been made subject to technologies of discipline and social control.” (p.6)
• “As such, this book provides a map of how these actions have influenced dominant perceptions of Canadian identity and how they have shaped practices of political marginalization.” (p.7)

Risks

The process of naming something as a Risk or a Threat – not grounded in reality.

• “Since as human beings we are all vulnerable to a plethora of risks from getting hit by lightning to succumbing to degenerative ill, the discussions construction of some person/place/thing as a security threat is primarily an interpretive assessment that draws from subjective classificatory criteria shaped by a multitude of contextual factors, including our cultural, social, economic, and political circumstances.” (p.7)

The Other

• “The ways in which we understand our relationships both with respect to and within [our cultural, social, economic, and political circumstances] contribute to who we think we are (the Self) by juxtaposing ourselves with that which we claim not to be (the Other).” (p.7)
• The Self and the Other:
• This Binary is crucial to “the interpretive exercise that is central to defining threats” (p.7)
• It is likewise crucial to “engendering the subjectively produced understandings that make these meanings possible)” (p.7)
• Us vs Them implies Us (Superior) over Them (inferior)
• Security and Identity are “mutually constitutive in the processes through which the Self is distinguished from its Others”
• The Self is not different from the Other in any ‘natural’ way – rather, it “is produced through discourse” (p.7)
• “Very often, what is perceived as difference is interpreted primarily as a threat to who we claim to be, and the subjective criteria utilized in making these judgments are naturalized in order to provide an objective grounding for our definitional claims.  However, there are also always possibilities to not feel threatened by difference, to move beyond liberal acts of toleration that still betray a wish for redeeming change into sameness, and to find security in intersubjective differences.” (p.7)
• Herein lies potential for reconciliation – and “the potential to foster a world less capricious in the deployment of violence in the name of security.” (p.7)

Chapter 7: The Geo-politics of Dancing

What Happened in Toronto and Why does it matter to Edmonton?

The relevant part of the Toronto story begins with the death of Allan Ho.

• Allan Ho, a twenty-year old Ryerson University student
• At a rave in an underground parking lot in Toronto’s west end.
• According to eye-witnesses: “poorly ventilated, dusty, overcrowded, and without running water [...] a combination of factors that experts agreed would have exacerbated the dehydrating and metabolic side effects of MDMA that contributed to his death”
• He died several hours later “from causes determined by autopsy to be MDMA (ecstasy) related”
• It was the ninth ecstasy-related fatality in Canada at the time.

The death of Allan Ho:

• “was perceived as a preventable tragedy by Toronto’s rave community as well as by public authorities; however, interpretations differed greatly as to who and/or what should be blamed.”
• The incident was the site of interplay between “popular and practical discursive representations of youth, illicit drugs, illicit drug use, culture, and identity”
• It has interesting similarities (according to the author) with the disappearance of a TorontoHigh School student after a Pink Floyd concert a decade earlier.

The Death of Benji Hayward (p. 197), after a Pink Floyd concert in Toronto in 1988, laid the groundwork for the discourse surrounding raves in the 90’s.  

Benji Hayward: (pp.197-198)

• Died, drowned in Lake Ontario, after a Pink Floyd concert.
• Age 14; the concert was held 13 May 1988, at Exhibition Stadium on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) in TO
• After he did not return home, police, friends, family, volunteers helped search
• “Five days later his body was recovered in Lake Ontario, off the shore of Coronation Park, southeast of Exhibition Stadium.  An autopsy revealed he had drowned and that no foul play had been involved.”
• Drug-related discourse surrounding his death/disappearance:
• His parents “publicly expressed worry that he might have taken drugs at the concert and become disoriented.”
• Authorities revealed “that [Benji Hayward’s] best friend, who had accompanied him to the concert, had been picked up by police in a nearby neighbourhood ‘stoned on LSD’”
• Popular interpretation of the circumstances surrounding this death “argued that illicit drugs were the direct cause [and] borrowed from existing discursive representations of the particular dangers of drug use to young people.”
• Note: “LSD was blamed prior to any concrete evidence of its involvement in this tragedy.”
• In the media, it was contended that “ ‘LSD, cocaine and crack’ were passed around openly at the Pink Concert attended by Benji, and that ‘everybody is doing needles now’ (‘Fewer are doing drugs,’ 1988).”
• Statements by police at the time: “Children can by any time of illegal drug in [Toronto]       if they do a bit of searching [...] We have a hell of a serious problem [...] It’s frightening.” (Orwen 1988; Millar 1988)
• These “representations of illicit drugs as a menace”:
• Gave “greater impetus [to illicit drug use] to be framed as a threat to Canadian youth”
• “Proscribed a certain set of responses as reasonable”
• “Eliminated the discursive space for articulating alternative approaches that would not have necessitated [...] increased social controls and punitive measures.”
• This tragedy “contributed to a renewed reaffirmation of the securitization of illicit drugs in Canada.”
• this was in spite of “all the available data at the time [that] clearly showed that youth drug use had fallen dramatically since the 1970’s.”
• A coroner’s inquest was convened, “primarily to ascertain exactly how Benji Hayward had died, what factors contributed to his death, and what measures could be put in place to reduce illicit drug use and prevent other children from meeting the same fate.”
• At the time of the inquest, “drug use had been localized within popular discourse as originating within the lifestyle promoted by rock’n’roll musicians.”
• “It was argued that ‘the world of rock [...] is a world without standards, the world of our ugliest thoughts, a world to which the entry key is frequently drugs (Jones 1988)’.”
• Thus “the ultimate problematic raised by Benji Hayward’s death was the proliferation of the ‘rock’n’roll lifestyle’ – most dramatically symbolized by illicit drug use – into the confines of the (future) Canadian Self: its youth.”
• “Efforts were made to securitize rock music and the venues that gave live performances [...] Petitions circulated demanding tough new measures be taken by the provincial and federal governments demanding that tough new measures be taken to combat what one Toronto councillor called ‘the rampant drug problem that is infesting our children’s lives both in the schools and in the streets (James 1988).’
• “The linking of drug use with rock concerts – particularly heavy metal events – [...] contributed to an already existent geopolitical boundary in Canada [...] used to demark and even create clear boundaries to separate spaces that hosted illicit drug activities and those that did not, in order to prevent transmissions between the two positions.”
• Precedents in Canada: in 1900-1920, “geopolitical reasoning that prohibited Canadian Canadian women from living close to [Vancouver’s] Chinatown”; in the 1940’s and 50’s, idea of “island colonies for drug users” 
• The representational and discursive groundwork established by the revelations provided during the inquest drew from pre-existing geopolitical sensibilities that made it possible for the coroner’s jury, in reaching its conclusion, to call drugs ‘the curse of the century’ and to urge that ‘governments at all levels should declare a war on drugs’ (Morris 1988f).”
• In conclusion / in retrospect:
• One, over the course of the inquest, the actions of two groups of police were compared.  One, the missing persons squad – “lackadaisical,” had not taken the disappearance seriously, did not help to organize a search, and in the end, it was the family’s organization work that located the body.  Two, police who, prior to his death, had interviewed Benji Hayward on Yonge Street about suspected involvement in a drug deal, but did not arrest him or alert his parents – did not ‘do something.’  It is on this second group of police that remained the focus of “criticism of police conduct in public discourse.”
• Two: the coroner’s jury also recommended that lakefront water safety be improved (Benji Hayward’s body was found in Lake Ontario) but “these important recommendations received little media attention in comparison with calls to fight against illicit drugs because the issue had already been framed by the terms of discourse to be exclusively one of illicit drugs. [...]  That was the problem that needed to be addressed, not police professionalism or public safety around Lake Ontario.”

Conclusions regarding Benji Hayward and subsequently, What happened to raving in Toronto and Canada (p. 202):

Similarities between Benji Hayward and Allan Ho:

• Both tragic, preventable
• They both “galvanized particular types of threat construction that targeted specific classifications of people, substances and spaces and being inherently dangerous to Canadian society.”
• The Benji Hayward case “restricted the discursive bandwidth of policy possibility” by the time of the rave scene and the death of Allan Ho

How did the death of Allan Ho “contribute to the securitization of Canadian rave sub-culture?”

• The answer “can be found by analysing the politics of representation that argued that raves posed a growing threat to young Canadians and Canadian society at large.”
• Note: “the spatial dimensions of this process;” the clear line between the space where illicit drug use happens and where it does not happen; “ ‘the outside’ within ‘the inside’”

Campbell 1998, 9: Performatives of identity – personal, national – take elements of the Self and reconstruct them as “the objectively verifiable ‘defilings’ ‘ deviant’ and ‘disturbed’ characteristics of the Other.  Likewise. “the spaces we occupy, traverse, and avoid” become charged with value judgments.

• Often, these judgments are “naturalized as objectively defined truths reflected by the real world”
• In fact, they are subjective constructions
• Based on “value judgments of characteristics that could or should be attributed” to a space
• Note, the author’s example: people who live in high crime areas “may feel safer in them that inside the walls of a police station.”

“Raves have been constructed as dangerous spaces based on an interpretation of threat that perceives them as containing deviant practices that are capable of spilling over into the sanctified space of Canadian territoriality.”

• Raves were “saddled with outlier status by public authorities”
• “Canadian rave subculture found itself embroiled in a geopolitics of dancing” 
• All levels of government, policing attempted “to securitize the practices and spaces popularly represented as being indicative of this culture.”  

Ecstasy (p. 208)

“Ecstasy (or MDMA) and electronic music were essential in the development of rave culture (McCall 2001; Reynolds 1999).”

“What remains contentious is the ongoing relationship between ecstasy and rave.”

• Ravers – content that the drug is incidental to the party; and that not everyone at the party takes it; it is not essential
• “Law enforcement around the globe has succeeded in perpetuating a politics of representation that constructs rave not only as inextricably tied to ecstasy (i.e., there can be no rave without the drug) but also as a site that facilitates the proliferation of drugs use within regular society.”

Note:

• Note that in 2002, researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine published a study they had to retract a year later; stating that a typical dose of ecstasy could cause permanent brain damage to humans, leading to Parkinson’s disease
• However, the methodology: did not use MDMA, it used methamphetamine, “injected at overdose levels”
• The study had received $10 million in funding from the US National Institute for Drug Abuse
• “Questions about [the researchers’] credibility and political motives became more pointed when the connection was made that the results of the MDMA study had first been released at a time when the anti-rave act was being debated in Congress (McNeil 2003a, 2003b; Morris 2003).”

MDMA:

•        Re-discovered in 1965 by Alexander Shulgin, “an American biochemist working for Dow Chemical”

•        Used by therapists in the 1970s

•        And began to be “distributed within the straight and gay club scenes in Dallas and Austin, where it was sold openly from the bar as a substitute for alcohol after legal serving hours.”

•        At this time it was not prohibited under US Law

•        Spread to NY, Chicago

•        Outside North America, it became popular at resorts such as Ibiza.

MDMA attracted the attention of the Drug Enforcement Agency “after disturbing reports of its growing use in the United States.”

• Even at this time in the 1980’s, the claim was that it caused brain damage
• It was considered to be so dangerous, that, in 1985, “the DEA circumvented standard procedures and undertook an emergency reclassification, placing it as a Schedule 1 substance – the most restrictive category, one reserved for drugs with no medical application.”  
• Note that the UK scheduled this drug in the 1960’s, and Canada in 1977.  Also note that in these cases, the restriction came about because the drug was derived from other amphetamine drugs that were already scheduled – not in reaction to its effects.

What, or why, is the connection between raving and ecstasy:

1. Amphetamine-like effects – provide energy for all night dancing
2. The effect of ecstasy to make music more pleasurable
3. The fact that it is a social drug

And, the side effects are relatively minor.

So what is the big deal? “What has made it possible for this substance to be securitized?”  

Especially in the face of comparatively low death, injury rate to people who use it.

• To address the issue of danger from MDMA, why not adopt the strategy of providing safe venues, and providing education/harm reduction?
• Because: “to provide safe venues would be to admit rave culture into the Self – an unacceptable move if national identity has been tied to particular patterns of drug consumption.”
• “Rejection of rave makes it possible to fixate on disciplinary measures to eliminate these spaces within the bounded territory of the state.”
• “Canadian responses to raves have embodied a series of paradoxical dichotomies between Self/Other, inside/outside, and safe/dangerous”
• “Representational practices that have coded rave as a dangerous geopolitical space, because of clams that drug use is inherent to the event/culture, make it possible for arguments to be made that these spaces should be outside the realm of normal social regulation.”

History of Rave in Toronto

1989: Rave spreads across Europe and North America from starting points in the UK. 

• In the UK, initial police and media reports “where initially quite positive” particularly regarding the absence of alcohol at raves.
• However, “as reports began to surface of ecstasy use and as outdoor parties became increasing unruly, the police responded with raids and crackdowns while politicians enacted new laws to abolish rave (McCall 2001, 40; Reynolds 1999 56-79).”
• In the UK, rave was “increasingly represented within Conservative popular discourse as emblematic of growing disorder in English society.”
• Rave became associated with anarchy, squatters, travelers, free festivals
• “To deal with these communities, police powers were extended.” 
• Reynolds, 1999: 173: “the right to remain silent was removed [...] police were given the right to stop and search people they suspected might be planning a rave.”
• Applicable to gatherings as small as ten people
• “[Police] could also stop individuals within a one-mile radius of a suspected rave venue and order them to leave.”

Toronto’s first rave, according to Grayson, was in August 1991.  

• The scene there was “particularly made possible by Toronto’s status as one of the earliest cities for house music in North America (Silcott 1999, 79).”

• Possible reasons for this: geographical proximity to New York and Detroit; ethnic and sexual diversity; specific radio DJs such as Chris Sheppard
• “The community developed in Toronto with small after-hours clubs” often run by British ex-pats who had experienced the scene in London.
• Events “soon began to flourish, with several production companies competing among one another.”

Police reaction, initially: “non-reactionary”

• Parties were seen “as a way to keep kids off the streets and away from alcohol”
• “According to Mireille Silcott, Sergeant Guy Coirvoisier, tasked with investigating Toronto’s growing rave scene at the time, noted that ‘it’s going to be a long hot summer.  Unemployment is high.  People need something to do.  Raves don’t need to be a problem.  They can be part of the solution’ (p.83).”
• Raves were heavily monitored but the police attitude was that they were there to ensure events and venues were safe.
• Again, citing Silcott: “The rationale was that ‘they would rather have two thousand young people in a safe controlled environment on weekends than running loose on the streets causing mischief (p.83).”

Toronto’s rave scene in the first half of the 1990’s “encompassed North America’s biggest rave populations” – including the largest jungle scene in North America

• Events were attracting 15,000 people by the second half of the 1990s
• “one of the continent’s most vibrant rave scenes”

1999: “the rave scene was reaching its apex in Toronto”

• “Large events were occurring on a weekly basis with world-class talent.”
• “[...] an ever-growing number of nightclubs in Toronto were hiring and playing varieties of music [...] to attract a mature audience who could legally consume alcohol.
• “The Toronto Police made no distinction among these clubs (most of which had liquor licenses) and races (which were usually alcohol-free events).”

Venues included: System Soundbar, Industry, The Guvernment, Kool Haus, Element, Space, X-it, Meow, Bassmint, Area 51, Turbo, Audiowerks, and the Comfort Zone.

Toronto Dance Safe Committee writes ‘Protocol for the Operation of Safe Dance Events’

October 11, 1999: Death of Allan Ho.  “Rave was reaching its apex in Toronto.”

Early November 1999:

•        At the request of the Toronto Police, Ontario’s Consumer and Commercial Relations Minister calls for “a summit of public authorities to develop a plan for controlling raves (McCarten 1999).  

•        Also there is a coroner’s inquest scheduled for the spring.  

•        Therefore, “Toronto’s rave community pre-emptively sought ways to regulate events in a manner that would not lead to the demonization of the subculture.”

•        “To promote responsible raving, members of the rave community, rave promoters, lawyers, Toronto City Council members; security operators, and city officials formed the Toronto Dance Safe Committee (TDSC) to establish a protocol for rave venues.”

The committee reached consensus “despite its diverse membership,” in the form of the Protocol for the Operation of Safe Dance Events.

•        Raves were to be licensed

•        Grounds for issuing / not issuing a license would be (TDSC 1999): “venue density, provision of free water, operational toilet facilities, adequate ventilation, no smoking as per existing legislation,” and police presence

•        Police presence: 1 Ontario Provincial Police bonded security officer per 100 patrons; two paid duty OPP officers for the first 500 people, 1 officer per 500 people after that

•        There were to be ambulance services for events of more than 1000 people

•        Also, there was to be space within the venue for drug/health education

• Finally, communication with city officials was to be undertaken one week before the event, regarding confirmed location and maximum attendance
• Failure to comply with the protocol “would result in the rave being immediately shut down by the police and the potential laying of criminal charges.”

“The rave community felt that by adopting the [Protocol], it had shown itself to be able to work with the public authorities to address legitimate safety issues and thereby avoid the securitization of raving.”

But the police did not want to take part.

• The Police: neo-parrhesiastes, according to Grayson
• Parrhesia – speaking truth to power (at person risk to the speaker)
• Neo-parrhesia – speaking from a position of power to secure truth
• The TSP “made the strategic move to use the upcoming inquest (and the accompanying media attention) as a means to secure their privileged social status as the monopolizer of the truth”:
• Spring 2000: Toronto Police make 47 arrests at 2 raves held on city-owned property (CNE grounds).  95 charges laid; reported seized ecstasy, ketamine, cocaine, crack, hashish, and marijuana (Ruryk and Artuso 2000)

The response?

• “The rave community responded that these arrests were made at events that had a combined attendance of over 25,000 people”
• Toronto’s mayor, “initially unperturbed by these arrest figures” defended raves on city property (Wanagas 2000c): 
• “The kids – good kids – are going to [raves] because they’re looking for a place to go ... this is what we should be doing [holding raves on city property[ and we should be having people there to supervise them, look after them .. We know there will be police there – whether they’re undercover or whatever – but they will be there and they will be there to watch and they will be there to make sure that the kids don’t get into trouble .... I endorse that wholeheartedly.”
• “I don’t want to see kids get into trouble.  I don’t want to see kids get killed.  I don’t want to see kids get hurt.  I don’t want to seem them get hit over the head with a bottle.  I want to see some adults there.  I want to see some protection there and that’s what this does.  So let’s endorse it wholeheartedly – not partially.  I know this is the right way to go.”

Operation Strike Force

“Given that there was little awareness in Canada at the time, the TPS began to classify an after-hours event as a rave, regardless of the purposes or characteristics of the gathering.”

• In this way they could associate rave with violence associated with after-hours clubs in the greater GTA.
• Operation Strike Force: this was the name of the special police unit that targeted 22 after-hours clubs with a history of violence.  
• regarding the shootings: Canadian Press, 2000: “Downtown Club Shooting”; “Fatal shooting of bouncer at downtown rave club has left neighbouring businesses shaken and considering closing down.”
• In 6 weeks of Operation Strike Force: 53 arrests, weapons seized included 12 handguns and 2 sawed-off shotguns.
• “These items were often presented during press conferences as items seized from raves.”
• “By conflating rave with other types of events/environments, the TPS shaped the ways in which rave was represented in popular discourse, thus making it more amenable to securitization.”  

About this time, rave subculture begins to receive national attention.  Particularly due to a MacLean’s article “provocatively worded”: ‘Rave Fever: Raves Are All the Rage but Drugs are Casting a Pall over their Sunny Peace-and-Love Ethos’ (Oh, 2000).

• supposedly, a primer on rave culture
• “the article incited public opinion by portraying raving and ecstasy as inseparable’
• claimed that ecstasy “has been implicated in at least 14 Canadian deaths in the last two years” and stated: “Trafficking in ecstasy and other rave drugs, meanwhile, has become a virtual epidemic” (Oh, 2000).

Within a month:

• Toronto Mayor Lastman does “an about face” with the statement:
• “What [a rave] turns out to be is a place for drug pushers [...] That’s where they get known [...] That’s where they sell their drugs.”  

Sandra Pupatello, Liberal member of the Ontario Legislature, takes herself on a fact-finding mission to a Windsor rave; then speaks to the media about how she was offered ecstasy.  “I did find many, many ... very young people out in the middle of the night and most of them stoned ... it took about 20 minutes from my arrival to be offered the ecstasy” (Ruryk and Artuso, 2000).

Police Chief to Prime Minister: Raves are “threatening the very fabric of Canadian life”

“Newly appointed Toronto police chief Julian Fantino spearheaded the anti-rave bandwagon in Toronto by publicly inviting Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to a rave for the sake of demonstrating to him that the events ‘were threatening the very fabric of Canadian life’” (Kingstone 2000)

• This took the form of an open letter published in the media
• Fantino described raves:
• ‘bringing together thousands of young people under one roof’
• ‘with 80% of them using drugs’
• ‘a source of huge profits for drug dealers’
• and drug dealers having ‘an open field of impressionable minds.’
• ‘kids, most of them under 16, high on drugs, [and] dancing.’
• Ecstasy: 
• placing ‘Canadian youths at risk’
• ‘creating a health and safety emergency’
• ‘could easily become an epidemic’
• easy to produce from ‘recipes on the internet for pennies a pill and sold for up to $45.’
• ‘And partiers will often buy two’
• Concluded: 
• ‘There is a national ignorance on the subject of raves’
• ‘the government of Canada needs to address the problem and rectify this frightening situation.’

Around this time, reports began to surface that ‘night club and rave cultures are mixing Viagra with illicit drugs despite warnings that users could be setting themselves up for heart attacks’

• In Toronto on May 22: ‘Viagra Finds Favour with Ravers,’ 2000.  Toronto Star, 22 May, A6.
• Notice that the same story ran in Edmonton on May 22: ‘Viagra, rave drugs a bad mix, health experts warn,’ 2000.  Edmonton Journal, 22 May, A9.

Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman reverses stance

“Strongly influenced by Fantino's stance, Mayor Lastman abruptly declared that raves must be banned from city property:”

• 'We can't control them [...] You can't control the drugs, you can't control what [people] do and you can't control how crazy people get once they take the drugs' (Rusk 2000). 

“Yet many city councilors opposed both the representations of rave and the imposition of a citywide ban [because] Such moves would place rave outside the scope of effective regulatory mechanisms.”

• Olivia Chow, city councillor and former Board of Education trustee
• “served as a crucial liaison between ravers and city officials as the former responded to the accusations leveled by Fantino”
• also “lent ravers her expertise as their community mobilized itself politically”
• Joe Pantalone, another left-wing councillor
• argued (Rusk, 2000) that banning raves on city property 'is not really a solution... If we lose the good operators and the outcome is... simply to drive it underground in an unsafe situation, then I think we're all the losers for it'  • 
• “added that though more than 100, 000 young people had attended raves at the CNE over the previous two years, there had not been a single serious injury an act of serious vandalism, or any reports of violence (ibid.)”  •  
• Councillor David Miller who would later become Toronto's mayor:
• argued (Wanagas 2000a) “that the city-owned CNE grounds were an excellent venue for raves because the location was far enough removed from residential areas that no one would be disturbed”. 
• And, that “Julian Fantino was 'over-dramatizing' the drug problem at city-sanctioned raves, where on average ten to fifteen persons were being charged for drug offences per thousand people (in ibid.).”
• Asserted that “'if you go into Rosedale [an affluent Toronto neighborhood] right now with 20 or 30 police officers and stop every single young person until you get up to 1000, you're going to find way more than 20 kids with drugs’ (in ibid).”
• But also “distinguished between city-sanctioned raves with police and ‘good security’ and ‘what raves used to be in the beginning [when not under city control]: huge unsupervised, wild crazy parties with tons of drugs’ (in ibid). 
• “Thus, paradoxically the issue of whether or not to permit raves on city property was constructed on an axis of governmentality that differed on the best means to control and discipline the practices of rave. In essence, the dilemma centered on what kinds of activities could be brought within the spatial confines of the Self without losing the proclaimed characteristics (e.g., order, non-use of illicit drugs, stoicism) that constituted this identity and that demarcated a border between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside of legitimate Canadian society.”

Lead-up to Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Allan Ho: Lastman bans raves from city property

Lead up to coroner’s inquest:

• Powell 2000: “Anti-rave and anti-drug rhetoric [were] hitting a fever pitch” – Grayson calls this “telling of the political context in which the broader issues raised by [Allan Ho’s] death were to be examined”
• Members of rave community worried that the inquest would focus on “representing raves as the source of youth drug (ab)use” 
• The TPS “saw the inquest as a means of drawing attention to the ‘root of the evil’ – evil that it defined as the use of illicit drugs”
• TPS worried that “the inquest was merely a publicity maneuver, a way for authorities to look like they were doing something.

Two days before the coroner’s inquest: 

• “Toronto City Council at the urging of Mayor Lastman approved a motion to suspend all raves on city property indefinitely by a margin of 32 to 18 (DeMara and Moloney 2000).” 
• “Key to this policy reversal were statements made by Chief Fantino to Council, at the invitation of Mayor Lastman, about three raves held on city property earlier that year.”
• “[Fantino’s] statements included the assertion that ‘there were a number of episodes where we witnessed young people rolling around on the floor, basically squirming around in their own vomit’ (ibid.).” 

“Fantino claimed to be 'informing' Council about a critical public safety issue.”  Yet,

• Will Chang, a lawyer and member of the TDSC, contended that 'the police chief has no idea what the rave scene is all about in Toronto,' given that Fantino had never attended one (Levy 2000).”  
• “Some councillors complained [afterward] that instead of answering direct questions as had been agreed to earlier, Fantino had taken it upon himself to deliver a sermon that drew from Benji Hayward's death twelve years earlier 'in an attempt to equate that tragedy with what's happening at raves on the CNE grounds today' (Wanagas 2000d).  [Fantino] even declared 'drugs and drug abuse are the curse of this century 'quoting directly from the Hayward inquest's final report (ibid.)”

Toronto’s rave community “derided” the decision to ban raves from city property.

• “It was interpreted as reneging on previous agreements embodied in the Protocol”
• “It was also perceived as making it possible for raves to become the very thing that was already being presented in popular discourses: dangerous, drug-filled events.”
• Kim Stanford, community health nurse and founder of the Toronto Rave Information Project (TRIP), and member of the TDSC, argued “that the ban would be a total disaster.”  In TDSC 2000: “Venues owned by the City of Toronto are ideal.  They have ample ventilation and running water.  These are essential to prevent overheating, dehydration and other health complications associated with dancing all night at raves.”

Ontario Raves Act 2000:

Toronto is also the seat of the Ontario Provincial government, where Liberal MPP Sandra Pupatello, “on the basis of her fact-finding mission, introduced Private Member's Bill 73 (Raves Act 2000)” about the same time as the events taking place in Toronto city hall.

•        Put forward as “a means to regulate safe raves in Ontario”

•        The bill “would prevent anyone from holding a rave (a dance event occurring between two a.m. and six a.m. for which admission is charged) without having a permit issued by the municipality in which the event would be taking place.”

•        Also: “It would also prevent any property from hosting a rave unless a permit had been issued.”

New powers given to police by the Raves Act:

•        “Police were to be given the powers to enter, without a warrant, any place where they reasonably believed a rave was being held in violation of the act or a bylaw.”

•        “The range of infractions that could legitimate a police inspection spanned from the obvious (like overcrowding) to the nebulous suspicion that organizers had not removed people who might be engaging in unlawful activity.”

o       According to the terms of the bill, rave promoters would be required “to remove anyone from an event who ‘may be engaged in unlawful activity.'”

•        “During inspections, police were to have the authority to make reasonable inquiries of any person and require the production for inspection of any document or thing that was relevant to the investigation.” (removal of right to remain silent)

•        “The police were also to be granted the power to order everyone to vacate a premises suspected of hosting a rave, subject to a $5,000 fine for non-compliance.”

According to Grayson: 

•        “The intent of the legislation was to discourage raves by instituting a Byzantine and costly permit process while saddling ravers and rave organizers with a prohibitive spectrum of legal liabilities and responsibilities.”

•         “In sum, the Raves Act was designed to legalize the harassment of a subculture of which the police were already deeply suspicious.”

•        “The police would be invested with the authority to enter a rave on just about any pretense and conduct a fishing expedition for potential criminal activity, holding organizers and other patrons directly responsible for the activities of others.”

•        “Thus, even with formal regulation, rave was to become a space that was legally recognized as so distinct from normal Canadian society that it was necessary and politically possible for individuals within that space to be subject to a range of disciplinary impositions beyond what would normally be acceptable.”

“ [...] Things looked grim for the [Toronto] rave community”

• Raves had been banned from city property
• Raves Act received first reading in legislature

June 1, 2000: Verdict, and Recommendations of Coroner’s Inquest

Members of the rave community were “shocked and overjoyed to read that the jury's primary conclusion was that city-owned properties should be made available as rave venues [...]”

• The reason?  “[...] because they offered a level of safety unlikely to be surpassed by privately owned properties.”
• “With regards to venues and rave promotion, the jury also recommended that the following should be established as standard operating procedures:”
• free access to drinking water; no admittance to persons under 16; no depictions of drugs or drug use in promo materials; venue location to be printed on ticket; all patrons to be searched; no admittance to persons in possession of drugs; paid police officers to supplement private security;
• increased drug education and harm reduction; $0.50 per ticket to go to harm reduction projects
• increased government funding for harm reduction projects
• Conditions above received the bulk of media attention, and were seen as a victory for the rave community.  
• However, there were also the following conditions:
• the number of paid duty officers was to be decided by the police, with no means of appeal
• the Raves Act 2000 was to be brought into effect
• Illicit drug use would be a reportable disease so that physicians could track patterns of drug use
• development of Drug Recognition Experts within police forces who would establish if someone was on drugs, and if so, which ones
• “meaningful sentences for those who traffic drugs to young people”
• expansion of scheduled compounds to make it more difficult to manufacture drugs

Lastman: Still no raves on city property

Even in light of the coroner’s recommendations, Toronto mayor Mel Lastman “refused to permit raves in Toronto until the provincial government gave ‘municipalities stricter powers of control’ over the events (Freed 2001).”  

• i.e., passage of the Raves Act
• However, the Raves Act died on the order paper over the summer of 2000
• the provincial government left the issue to municipalities.

The rave community in Toronto began to organize “in response to the intransigence on the part of public authorities with regard to rave on city property.”  

• A public protest was to be held on August 1, 2000 “in Nathan Philips square [...] during City Council’s next scheduled meeting.”
• “The issue framed by the rave community was the safety of rave attendees and the unwillingness of public authorities to ensure this safety by providing venues.”

“Thus an interesting geopolitics of dancing arose in Toronto at that time.  The publicly owned spaces of the Canadian Self were represented in the discourse of rave as offering unrivalled safety and protection, even by those whose practices had placed them outside of the boundaries of the dominant construction of the Self, both spatially and in terms of a shared (cultural) identity.  However, the strategy chosen by the Canadian Self, represented by the City of Toronto and its public authorities, was to resist this proposed incorporation and leave rave firmly on the outside looking in.”

The response by the rave community?

• “One of the possibilities open to rave at that time was to reshape the terms of public discourse so that it no longer immediately conjured up images of rampant drug use.”
• The rave community “did not defend illicit drug use, and as much as possible it created distance between the act of dancing and [drugs] within the space of the rave.”
• e.g., a presentation of the figure (from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health) that “while 25% of Ontario high school students had attended a rave, only 4% had tried ecstasy” – “a dramatic difference from [Julian] Fantino’s earlier claim that 80% of all rave patrons were on drugs.”

Ravers gain traction in public discourse, rally; police act pre-emptively

The discourse began to shift.

• “Slowly, illicit drug use began to be seen as an aberration within the practices of rave; this made it possible to link rave with performatives of the Canadian self.”
• In this way, the issue changed: 
• Raves no longer seen as ‘the’ site that encourages illicit drug use
• Raves were to provide safe venues “that would discourage lingering illicit drug use”
• Public support began because (according to Grayson) “Toronto’s rave community had begun [...] affirming its adherence to performatives of the Canadian Self.”
• “An increasing number of city councillors were publicly affirming that they were willing to reconsider the ban.”
• “Even the Toronto Star bought into this problematic”: “City councillors can’t vote raves our of existence.  But they can vote to make them safer (‘Council Should...’ 2000)”

Five days before the scheduled rally at Nathan Philips square, the Toronto Police Service, “still deeply suspicious of the rave community,” put forward their own protocol on raves.

• it was largely based on the original Protocol for Safe Dance events written by the Toronto Dance Safe committee and adopted by Toronto rave promoters
• also included recommendations from coroner’s report into death of Allan Ho
• The police protocol included the following stipulations:
• police were to conduct risk assessments before any event took place
• promoters would have to meet imposed security requirements
• police were to conduct background checks of promoters and organizers
• and paid duty officers, the number to be determined by police
• “The ultimate authority regarding whether a planned rave met these requirements, and the number of paid-duty police officers deemed necessary, was left to the discretion of the unit commander of the police division in which the event was taking place (Quinn 2000)”

“Thus, the Toronto Police Service had designed a protocol that not only positioned it as the overseer of rave in Toronto but also granted it an inordinate amount of authority, without any independent oversight of its decisions or any means by which to appeal them [...] The ability to discipline the practices of rave remained firmly in the hands of police.”

• Still, it was an attractive option for politicians as it addressed issues of safety.

August 1, 2000: iDance – approximately 10,000 to 15,000 people dance in protest

August 1:

• the iDance rally is held outside city council in Toronto
• from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m., making it a legal event
• an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people turn out – promoters were hoping for 5,000
• “several world-renowned DJ’s [...] offered their services free of charge”
• “Some commentators, overwhelmed by 1960s nostalgia, believed the rally might serve as a link between the current rave generation and their baby boomer parents by drawing from a people power ethos that had been absent from Canadian politics for many decades (Rayner 2000a, 2000b, Klein 2000).”
• Perhaps the event would become an annual event, “bringing in tourists and positioning Toronto as a premier rave city.”
• 1 ecstasy overdose; 11 arrests; “The police admitted that this ‘was a small number of incidents given that nearly 11,000 attended (Harding 2000a).”

Inside City Hall:

• Police presented their protocol to city council
• The motion to ban raves on city property was overturned (by a margin of 50-4)
• The Police protocol was approved.

Because raves were allowed again on city property, The iDance rally was portrayed as a success: i.e., “Kids had fought City Hall and won.”  But:

• There was the worry that ‘police discretion over the number of paid-duty officers required could kill events by making them too costly (Hadring 2000a).”

• Will Chang, Lawyer: “Ravers don’t trust the police.”
• Fears of the TPS as “an institution [that] was still inherently biased against raves” were “echoed by organizers of other subcultural events in Toronto, including Caribana and (Gay) Pride” whose events were threatened because they happened in a time frame covered by the protocol”; “The rave protocol had the capacity to potentially discipline a broad spectrum of non-hegemonic cultural practices in Toronto.”

Result: it was not a ‘win’ for ravers

“Chief Fantino dismissed the idea of any [institutional] bias [...] ‘I’d like to think we are honourable people ... We would not engage in that kind of discriminatory conduct.’”

However, the actual course of events gave the lie to the police chief and ravers discovered they had not really won at all.

• Halloween rave, 2000, called “Freakin’” – this was the first to be held on city property under the new protocol. 
• Expected to draw 7,000 people
• Police demanded 45 paid duty officers – a cost of $20,000
• In comparison, in 1998, only 10 officers had been deemed necessary for a Halloween rave, also held on city property, attended by 13,000 – an event that police that said took place ‘without incident’ with a security cost of $5,000
• New Year’s Eve: a party on city property 
• expected to draw 5,000 attendees
• police demanded 30-45 duty officers, at cost of $22,000
• police also demanded “that undercover paid-duty officers be allowed to patrol the crowd and arrest those suspected of trafficking, possessing, or using illicit drugs.”

Will Chang (TDSC Lawyer): “The Police gave their word to city council and to us that they would be reasonable and rely on past historical practices in determining how many paid duty officers would be required.  They have not been doing that.”

“The TPS ignored the accusations of institutional bias.”

“Meanwhile, the protocol was being used as a template by numerous other municipal police forces across Canada (including Calgary, Edmonton, Richmond, and Vancouver) to control – and ultimately prevent – raves within their respective jurisdictions.”

A second iDance rally was planned for Labour Day weekend 2001, in response to police actions.  “Organizers hoped to bring attention to the issue of paid-duty police serving as a barrier to a vibrant rave scene in Toronto.”

• “A comparable crowd attended”
• Attendees were asked to bring an item to donate to Toronto’s Daily Bread Food bank – note that the food bank set a one-day record for donations.
• “but unlike the first rally it was a party rather than protest atmosphere.”
• The issue of covert police harassment failed to generate the same level of public outrage as the overt securitization of raves.”

“The issue now was far more complex and subtle than prohibition”

• “Popular terms of discourse, of which the rave community was a major contributor, had made a police presence necessary for perceptions that an event was safe.”
• “Thus, organizers found it difficult to convey their message about the arbitrariness of police practices, and ultimately failed to generate the political pressure necessary for Toronto’s public authorities to consider revising the rave protocol.”

The “normalization” of rave: 

• “[...] also visible in the rather muted public outcry (in comparison with Benji Hayward or Allen Ho) over the death of a sixteen-year-old boy and a twenty-one-year-old mother from ecstasy overdoses at two Toronto nightclubs in the summer of 2001.”
• “[...] Very little media attention focused on the $10, 000 fine for fire code violations given to the promotion company that organized the rave at which Allen Ho died.”
• “Furthermore, the stabbing death of a university student at another event promoted by the same company in 2001 did not have the staying power of the Allen Ho overdose (Canadian Press 2001).”

“Unfortunately iDance was to be the last hurrah for the rave community.”

•        “large, all-ages events became increasingly infrequent”

•        “spiraling costs of organizing events that resulted from the Rave Protocol were compounded by the financial reverberations of 11 September, 2001” (increased insurance costs for events, decreased sponsorship money, general economic downturn)

“Even in these circumstances, the pace at which a formerly vibrant subcultural practice appeared to retreat seemed extraordinary, even with its covert securitization and resulting financial pressures.”

• In 2002 the third installment of iDance was cancelled
• Alex D (organizer of iDance rally): “The rave scene is dead, it’s finished, it’s over. It's gone... For the last few months, everyone I meet – friends, DJs, promoters -- I ask, "What do you think happened?" And nobody knows. Nobody knows where everybody went and nobody knows what's going to become of the scene’ (Rayne, 2002b)”

In 2001, “the RCMP publicized the findings of its own intelligence probe of' the Rave scene and chemical drugs.’ 

• “Heavy surveillance of rave by the RCMP had begun in 1997.”
• “An initial report was released early in 2000; however ‘due to high demand for that booklet and the rapidly changing drug scene,’ an updated report was released in 2001.”
• “While the report can be easily dismissed as an instance of the RCMP kicking rave when it was down, it can also be interpreted more ominously as an attempt by the authorities to reshape public discourse surrounding rave in Canada so that it could never come back.”

Designer Drugs and Raves

• Produced by the Drug Enforcement Branch
• provided extensive information on “rave, the typology of ravers, their organization, clandestine laboratories, designer drugs, drug analyses, and Canadian legislation.
• section “The Raver” “provided a topology of ‘stereotypical ravers’ that was filled with misinformation”
• “This gross unfamiliarity with the discourse of the Canadian rave scene was surprising, given that the report was the culmination of five years of extensive intelligence by the RCMP (RCMP 2001, 6).”
• the report claimed to be “ ‘a non-biased, fact based perspective”’ to counteract the message that “ ‘there is a possibility for ‘safe use’ of drugs like MDMA’” 
• Used the term “club and rave drugs.”  Club and Rave Drugs =
• MDMA
• substances sold as MDMA: MDA, 2C-B, MMDA, PMA, MDE)
• date rape drugs: GHB, Ketamine
• legal highs: caffeine, ephedrine, ehedra
• methamphetamine, LSD, Quaaludes, psilocybin, DXM, PCP, fentanyl, nitrous oxide
• The report says: the “real danger of designer drugs is the fact that users feel they are in control.  Even with occasional or weekend use, users become addicted to the lifestyle.”

What were its rhetorical / discursive techniques?

• the title.  “Designer Drugs and Raves” = People Take Drugs At Raves
• “Club drugs” = people take drugs in nightclubs
• A spectrum of threats is described, beyond those affecting the human body – as if emanating out from these locations
• Connection between ‘club and rave drugs’ and other forms of deviant behaviour
• conflation of night club and rave spaces for purposes of securitizing both

“The report’s overriding metaphor was that of proliferation in three distinct senses.”

• “first in terms of the spaces in which ‘club and rave drugs’ were supposedly being consumed.”
• Rave drugs are no longer consumed just at raves, but at house parties, high schools, collegs, campuses = rave can be blamed as the souce of behaviour that is occuring elsewhere
• “The report focused exclusively on rave and implicitly framed it as the epicentre”
• Second – “that more and more ravers were no longer limiting their illicit drug intake to MDMA and were becoming poly-drug users.” 
• Serves “to erase representational differences that may have existed in popular discourses about users of ecstasy being benign and non-threatening...” compared to hard drug users
• Ecstasy users are as erratic, threatening as users of other drugs because according to the RCMP they were also taking those drugs
• Third – “it was not the number of clandestine labs that were being discovered by police that was worrisome, so much as where these labs were being found – specifically, in suburban neighbourhoods.”
• the report included a checklist of indicators you could look for in your neighbour’s homes
• blacked out curtains, chemical smells, paranoid behavior, going outside to smoke cigarettes, security systems, visitors in expensive cars, late-night activity, seemingly unemployed
• similar to warnings of marijuana grow ops

“Blurring of club into rave as the locus of these practices” ... and beyond

• “The RCMP was raising the possibility that your children and your neighbourhood might be the sites where these were occuring.”

The list of “club drugs”

• “presented as self-evident based on factual evidence”, YET, “despite the virtual absence of heroin from the Canadian rave scene” the RCMP attempted to link heroin and raving: 
• The RCMP attempt to link raving to heroin
• By saying that pills sold as MDMA could contain heroin
• By presenting fentanyl as a club drug
• Note that the RCMP’s own lab analyses had not turned up any ecstasy pills containing heroin, and that no amount of fentanyl had been seized from raves over the course of their intelligence operations
• “to harness the strong negative representations of opiate use in general, and heroin more specifically, in Canada.”  -- “Important Site #1 of Representation Politics”
• “to transform the discursive representation of raves by equating them with opium dens and ‘shooting galleries’ and ravers with heroin junkies – arguably the least positively represented group of illict drug users.”
• “the addition of heroin might scare the public into applying political pressure for even tougher antirave regulations.”

“Site #2 of Representation Politics”: to link rave drugs and sexual assault

• GHB and ketamine are classfied as rave drugs
• GHB: the RCMP says it “relaxes inhibitions and increases libido, which could ‘facilitate sexual assault’”
• Ketamine: the RCMP reports “an incident where a female student was found unconscious on campus; her unconscious state was found to be the result of ingesting ketamine.  No assault occured [sic], however due to her unconscious state, one could have easily happened (RCMP 2001, 35)
• “One cannot fault the RCMP” for this even though there is no evidence, according to the author, given the potential.  However, “if the RCMP was trying to raise awareness of chemically aided sexual assault or date rape among young people, alcohol [...] should have been presented in the same manner.  Yet this legal drug was neither identified as a threat nor even mentioned in passing.”
• “Rave, then, was being linked to deviant sexual practices through the stigmitization of specific drugs as aids to sexual assault.”

Site #3

• Club Drugs does not include alcohol or tobacco
• despite extensive documentation of negative side effects
• note that both are among the most widely used drugs in clubs “and to a lesser extent, raves”

“Thus, in claiming to present a ‘fact-based approach’ to raves, the RCMP subjectively attatched particular meanings of threat to illicit drugs while completely ignoring the harmful effects of licit drugs – a move rich in ethical content.  Given the changes with the Canadian and (more specifically) Toronto rave scenes, this absence was not merely academic.”

Smokes, Booze and Rave

“By 2004, very few Toronto-based promotion companies remained with the capacity to host a rave of more than a thousand patrons.”

“Events of this size occured approximately quarterly, whereas five years earlier, Toronto had several large promotion companies, and raves were being attended by thousands of people on a weekly basis.”

All-ages raves largely abandoned; smaller club nights in licensed venues.  

What happens next? Alcohol and tobacco companies move in (sponsorships)

• attempt on part of companies to build brand recognition and reach a key demographic
• in Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver
• as in UK, Brazil, South Africa, US Australia, China
• Companies/Events: Benson & Hedges, Camel Cigarettes, Imperial Tobacco, Smirnoff, Baccardi, Heinecken
• “Sometimes the companies formed subsidiaries to organize the parties; other times they contracted them out to independent marketing firms”

Responses:

• positive: continued ability for patrons to see performers at low prices
• evidence of a mature scene – similar processes had occurred in US, UK earlier
• “unethical”
• “selling out”
• “wal-mart effect” – tobacco and alcohol sponsored events drive smaller companies out of business

“Most important, though, from a cultural persepctive, these events [...] took place in licensed venues that restricted admission to those nineteen or older.”  

The association between raves and no alcohol becomes weaker and weaker; the ability of raves “to attract and maintain a youth audience slowly diminished.”

1 October 2003 – the final phase of the Tobacco Act in Canada – “effectively banning all public advertising of tobacco products” – therefore no more overt sponsorship.  Some “guerilla” marketing at events by alcohol and tobacco companies.

Conclusions

• The response to rave drew from existing drug discourse.
• This discourse envisioned drug use as being separate, including spatially separate, from the Canadian Self.
• “Popular discourses allowed for the death of Allan Ho (like Benji Hayward before) to be framed as one centered solely on the use of illicit drugs.”
• In opposition, the rave community “engaged in performatives that excluded drug use from rave culture.”
• This was enough to gain political pressure to counter the overt securitization of rave...
• ... but it left the police an opening to move in covertly.  
• “The great irony is that [this] has led to an ongoing exposure to substances known to cause serious health effects” (alcohol and tobacco sponsorships)
• This discursive representation of rave/clubs as sites of danger has been persistent – according to the author, this is “one of the most fascinating aspects of this story”
• Government, in this story, “sought to control individual bodies for the purposes of orchestrating a particular performative of the Canadian body politic.”  
• This story illustraties
• discourses, and sites associated with illicit drugs
• how these are acted upon by governments
• the types of politics that then become possible or impossible

“The current feeling among many Canadian ravers is that rave as a particular set of subcultural practices is now dead.  This may be an exafferated interpretation; even so, the current context can be seen as one in which rave culture appears to be on life support.”

• Yet even so, some Canadian ravers point out that things are not as bad here as they are in the US; 
• “Thus even Canada’s rave subculture is engaged in a performative that differentiates Canada from the United States based on constructed notions of moderation and extremity.”

Conclusion (Chapter)

Racial profiling.  

• The books concluding chapter begins with exploration / image of incident of racial profiling at Caribana 2000 (Jason Burke)
• in October 2002 the Toronto Star begins an exploration of this topic (“The Story Behing the Numbers”)
• Note that the TPS had been “prohibited from compiling and analysing data based on race since 1989, when Julian Fantino (at the time a police staff investigator) generated a public relations crisis when he reported to a race relations committee that based on his own accounting of arrest numbers, the problem in the Jane-Finch corridor, one of Toronto’s high-crime neighbourhoods, was that ‘blacks’ were committing the most offences even though they accounted for a small percentage of the total population (“Racial Data a Hot Potato” 2002)”
• Numbers are “astonishing, especially given the dominant performatives of Toronto as the most tolerant multicultural city in Canada, and Canada as the most tolerant multicultural country in the world.
• Clear evidence of racial profiling, “according to experts in policing”
• Law enforcement community refuses to acknowledge these results
• Fantino, then police chief, gives interview before results given to public.  Declares racial profiling does not exist, blames Toronto Star for inaccurate reporting. (“Fantino: there is no racism” 2002)
• TPS officers also dispute results and commission their own report, which is dismissed as “junk science” (Moloney 2003).  “Immediately discredited by experts in the Canadian criminological community as having no appreciation of the nuances of racism and so being rife with methodologically unsound data-set manipulations; moreover, its findings, despite all this, in fact were consistent with the existence of racial profiling (Levy 2003).”
• TPS files a $2.7 billion class action lawsuit against Toronto Star alleging besmirched reputation of every officer in the service – the suit is immediately dismissed by Ontario Superior Court Judge 
• TPS insists.  
• December 2003: The Ontario Human Rights Commission releases report that argues racial profiling does happen “in a wide range of insitutions and agencies (beyond the police)” – criminal justice system, all levels of education system, CCRA, private security companies, private businesses, airports, etc.  Puts forward concrete recommendations.
• Not addressed at time of publication of this book.

Culture of Fear

• organized crime, terrorism, resource wars, global warming, pollution, infectious diseases, illegal immigration, computer viruses, weapons of mass destruction, cultural take-over
• much literature on this topic (Culture of Fear)
• Isin 2004: “neurotic citizens”: collective whose political paralysis is made possible via “proliferation and management of anxiety by state structures”
• Canadian body politic is affected by culture of fear that has made securitization possible
• at the same time, discussion of different threats to security (eg, “racial profiling, domestic violence, child poverty, corporate crime and corruption, police corruption, and the plight of Canada’s indigenous peoples”)

More and more resources are being directed towards Department of Public Security and Emergency Preparedness

• “superministry”
• mandate exceeds that of Dept of Homeland Security in US

Public support (at time of writing) is high for increased military spending.

Crime and imagination

• Canadian imagination: that criminal violence is increasing in society
• Yet, crime rates are comparively low, or very low 
•  “Overall, crime rates are at their lowest levels since the 1970s (Statistics Canada 2004a)”
• “However, seizing the opportunity presented by the popular imagination, law enforcement has continued to lobby for more resources and more uniformed officers by implying that a failure to provide both will result in social catasptrophe.”
• Discourse: understaffed and underpowered law enforcement agencies in Canada”
• Yet, eg, in Toronto at time of writing, law enforcement was single largest budget item, “dwarfing” all others
• “Not even a series of corruption scandals that implicated the head of the TPA and other union officials, disbanded an entire plainclothes division, and required a multiyear investigation by the RCMP into criminal activities undertaken by the TPS drug squad, shook the belief of law enforcement and the Canadian body politic that the ‘real’ security threats are illicit drugs, marijuana grow-ops, ethnic criminal organizations, bikers, illicit drug production laboratories, and foreign terrorists.”

Derrida (1995):

• “has argued that the concept of illicit drugs ‘supposes an instituted and an institutional definition: a history is required, and a culture, conventions, evaluations, norms, an entire network of entwined discourses, a rhetoric, whether explicit or elliptical’ (1995, 29)”
• illicit drugs “are both a lightning rod for and a reflection of the domincant Canadian notion of security and hegemonic performatives of Canadian identity.”

Marijuana arrests continue to rise, especially among the young.  in 2004, they reached a 20-year high (Powell, 2004, A5).  72% for simple possession.  Most among youth 18-24; followed by youth 12-17.

• “These numbers illustrate that policing priorities seem to be at odds not only with public attitudes [...] but also with their own representations of the most substantial threats posed to society by organized crime, illicit drug trafficking, illicit drug production, and terrorism.”
• “The power/relations that have made this possible are crucial to understanding what security can mean in Canada and the processes of securitization in Canadian society.”

Record numbers of prescription drugs, including many for drugs that have known harmful side effects.  Yet, the CMA continues to advise against medical marijuana because there is no “scientific proof” that the benefits outweigh the costs.

• “Given this incongruity, it is imperative to expose the ‘aspiration to power’ that lies behind these claims about drugs and the types of knowledge and experience that are disqualified within this regime of truth (Foucault, 2003e, 10).”

Illicit Drugs – can demonstrate “the multiple forms that power can assume in contemporary society”

• power over life and death
• physical punishment, violence, “aggrandizement of the state as a negative force”
• “disciplinary and governmental forms of power over life that manage the ways in which people must live by harnessing the legal and medical realms to promote public and individual ‘health’”
• “power to identify threats, calculate risks”
• to “respond in ways that pass the limits of law and/or convention”
• “power of control that establishes networks that survey, track, monitor, restrict, and regulate social flows”
• traditionally these have been viewed as separate channels
• “the issue of illicit drugs demonstrate that the full palette operates simultaneously, sometimes at various sites, sometimes at the same sites, sometimes in opposition, and sometimes in conjunction, as the art of government.”

The book has examined several case studies... “to begin the process of mapping out all of these discoursive contours.”

“Genealogies of illicit drugs help reveal what Canada understands itself to be and what it claims it needs to actively defend itself against.”  

• “interpretation is central to these processes”
• risks etc are not inherent to drugs themselves; nor is there any rational connection between the properties of drugs and the reaction to them
• “Through discourse, meaning has been assigned to subjects and objects, and to the contexts in which they have been constituted”
• “meaning is always arbitrary and contestable”
• “security is inseparable from broader ethico-political issues in the Canadian body politic about negotiating difference.”

Chasing the Dragon:

• “For most of the past hundred years, the hegemonic understanding has constructed illict drugs as threats to the Canadian way of life and the values that are constitutive of it.”
• “illicit drug use has not been repressed, so much as managed as a problem with biological, cultural, criminal and medical dimensions.”

Illicit drugs

•  = danger not because of their effects, but because of what they represent: “attempts by Others to defile the Canadian body politic.”
• “deviant, inferior, and distinctly un-Canadian”
• this discourse happens in an international context
• “performatives and performances around illicit drugs have been initiated to distinguish ‘Canadian’ attributes from those of the ‘criminal addict,’ the ‘Chinese opium smoker,’ the ‘Negro peddler,’ the ‘Somali,’ and even the ‘American.’” 
• threats and enemies are created via discourse, and vice-versa – cycle.

Strategies to manage difference: 

• acceptance, understanding, management, tolerance, rejection, denial, elimination
• from management on, these strategies require securitization, overt or covert
• including monitoring, confinement, quarantine, and isolation

“Canadian identity remains arbitrary and contradictory”

• “Canada is a progressive country on the leading edge of social reform”
• Canada is “a society of moral, hard-working, chaste, healthy, sane and civilized individuals compared to various racialized Others”
• “inherent superiority of Canada in terms of permitting individual choice over the body”

Social control is equally present in Canadian drug policy: “At key moments it has been able to assume more sophisticated and hidden forms”

Canadian War on Drugs:

• Often assumed to be hyperbole
• Foucault has argued that war is inherent to all society (2003e)
• In Canada, the war on drugs has determined who is and who is not a part of the body politic
• battleground is located in the “much larger theatre in which Self and Other have contested the boundaries of ‘Canadianness’ and clashed over their potential extension.”
• “The role of law in this struggle has been made possible by constellations of power / relations that have been constituted through discourse and dominant regimes of truth.”
• legal sanctions are used to expel people considered dangerous (Chinese opium)
• or to deny entrance (Somali Khat) to newcomers who are deemed to be beneath us
• law also serves to restrict alternative modes of expression (rave)
• in unison with scientific discourse, it “constructs the boundaries that ‘separate’ medicine from quackery.”
• Legal recourse exposes people to intrusion on their private lives, and marks them with a criminal record.

Beyond a war on drugs?

• “Popular performatives of Canadian identity continue to assign Canadian illicit drug policy a prominent place in defining Canada as a socially progressive state”
• especially compared to the US
• But “the emperor has no clothes”
• “Yet, for the Canadian public, the mere appearance of these policies within discourses has been enough to sustain the notion that there has been a substantial transformation in mechanisms of control in Canadian society.”
• multiculturalism, pluralism, diversity – except for those that are “too different”
• “various practices and people have been coded as ‘uncivilized’ and / or ‘dangerous’”
• “And these classifications have made the cultures and communities suject over the past hundred years to an assortment of technologies of violence, from race riots to racial profiling.”

No easy answers.  Note that the author does not take a political stance.

• “Critics must resist the temptation fo assign all responsibility for the current configurations of power to specific individuals such as William Lyon Mackenzie King, Emily Murphy, C.H.L Sharman, or Julian Fantino.”
• moral entrepreneurs have indeed acted unethically
• “but they were all acting within a far more extensive grid of intelligibility that not only made possible particular understandings, problematiques, and policies, but also legitimated them.”
• “Thus, criticisms must extend beyond individuals to dominant meanings, representations, discourses, bodies of knowledge, and modes of thinking, as well as their constitutive power/relations.”
• The larger list of targets is also “more elusive and resilient”

Anything not perceived as extreme compared to American policy is seen as progressive within Canada; “we are setting the bar far too low.  This has greatly stunted the space for a radical rethinking of the Canadian body politic to emphasize social inclusion, intersubjective understanding, and responsibility and accountability to our Others.”

Crucial first step: recognizing the limits of our contemporary modes of thinking.

Foucault 2003d, 172: “Criticism (and radical criticism) is utterly indispensable for any transformation. For a transformation that would remain within the same mode of thought, a transformation that would only be a certain way of better adjusting the same thought to the reality of things, would only be a superficial transformation.  On the other hand, as soon as people begin to have trouble thinking things the way they have been taught, transformation becomes at the same time very urgent, very difficult, and entirely possible.  So there is not a time for criticism and a time for transformation; there are not those who do ciriticism and those who have to transform, those who are confined within an inaccessible radicality and those who are obliged to make the necessary concessions to reality.  As a matter of fact, I believe that the work of deep transformation can be done in the open and always turbulent atmosphere of a continuous criticism.”

Author’s final para: “It is my sincere hope that I have made Canadian security and identity as interpreted though the issue of illicit drugs in Canada extraordinarily difficult to think about in relation to any prior certainties.  It is the undermining of certitude about what is at stake in discussions of illict drugs that can potentially unlock the ethical dimension central to successfully chasing the dragon and positively encountering the Other within these security issues, and in those that extend beyond this social domain.  There are no definite answers here, only an expanse of choices that represent vastly different assessments of ethical responsibility and accountability in our social worlds of mutual vulnerability.”

Kingstone, Jonathan. 2000.  ‘Fantino asks PM to T.O rave: Asks Chretien to see ‘kids high on drugs.’’ Toronto Sun, 5 May.

Ruryk, Zen and Antonella Artuso, 2000. ‘Raves History, Lastman Says: Mayor Wants Council to End City-Sanctioned Parties.’ Toronto Sun, 4 May.

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