Party Vibe

As Epiclulz points out Even giving those chemicals away can get you in trouble and at the very least the event license refused. (I am also in the same age group as all of you; I have the record he mentions on vinyl still in my collection).

Today it is not only the controlled drugs laws you have to comply with but the health and safety especially that of young people, which includes European common and civil laws from the Middle Ages on top of whatever religious groups may have added to them.

Since 2008 I’ve been researching the event licensing and drugs regulations across countries where at least one of the main languages is EN, FR, NL or DE (unfortunately I do not know enough of the other languages to read even a small bit of complex legal stuff) and what I discovered is the legislation is near identical across Northern Europe but the same restrictions exist everywhere to one extent or another.

In countries where drugs are more “tolerated” there are more safety rules for the event or (such as in many areas of Germany) you cannot dance on Sunday or other late evenings because everyone should have gone home to get enough sleep to attend church/temple/mosque (multicultural Europe also means all the religious folk work together to vote for these laws), selling/distributing RC’s directly at a music event is illegal just about everywhere and them if your music event attracts anyone below age 18 (which an EDM even most certainly will) you are legally obliged to keep them safe.

The laws against selling/distributing RC’s aren’t even always drugs laws but ancient laws from middle ages against selling poisonous “quack remedies” which were a problem in Europe since the 1600s…..

of course none of these events are free from drugs, any more than humans are free from sin or ships are free from rats (the anti-drugs regulation is not dissimilar to the maritime procedure of “dératisation”) – but in Europe you have to not openly commit these sins or let your ship be full with rats (unless you know how many there are and they are healthy).

@Requiem 598529 wrote:

GL: I slightly disagree but am totally open to being wrong. If you have people above the age of consent then they are responsible for themselves although I do totally understand your point.

that is where things get confusing for young people (as many of us, myself included started partying before age 16 anyway) but important for event organisers.

The age of consent for a lot of things has been increased from around age 16 to age 18 in the last 20 or so years; the UN considerers everyone aged 16-18 to still be a child and in Europe (whether or not a country is in the EU, not all of Europe is) age 16-18 is in a grey area where the young people are nearly adult but not quite.

With regard to licensing, the requirement to safeguard those aged 16-18 is stated in the Licensing Act 2005 for England and Wales (Scotland has different laws). Event organisers either accept it and put in a couple of extra security staff and/or have harm reduction measures or restrict the minimum age of entry to 18 or even 21/25 (I still regularly get asked for age ID as I look younger than my actual age).

The level of enforcement and tolerance varies across the UK and England (and within Europe as well); a lot of events are ”balkanised” into more deprived areas of big cities or capital cities/areas with a historical reputation for hedonism and a dependence on tourism.

Where there are still major industries or active sea ports or there has been a string of negative incidents associated with one night time venue or a lot of accidents/ODs amongst younger age groups they are more likely to enforce a zero tolerance policy.

Some of my friends found this out the hard way and went to prison some months simply for organising unlicensed events (I thought that was unjust, but there had been loads of ambulance call outs to these events and other incidents that the rave organisers were not properly dealing with, so the authorities wanted to make an example of them….), it has also since become near impossible to get a license for a legal event in this area as the cops and NHS say they cannot deal with the extra work due to budget cuts (which the locals here have unfortunately voted for!)