The War on Drugs has failed. But this is old news, acknowledged by politicians of all parties. The DARE program has been scientifically proven ineffective, but many neighborhoods still fight to keep it in their schools where it continues to waste valuable education funds.

In 2000, after a presidency that imprisoned the same number of drug offenders as criminals who comprised the entire U.S. prison population back in 1980, Bill Clinton told Rolling Stone magazine that small amounts of marijuana should be decriminalized in the United States. And it was another Democrat, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, who attached the controversial RAVE (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act of 2002 onto the unrelated AMBER Alert Bill.

President George Bush signed the whole package into law April 30, 2003.

This all seems confusing and hyper-counteractive when compared to the more progressive drug agendas of many European countries and Canada, where non-violent drug offenders don’t overcrowd prisons, and billions of dollars in anti-drug efforts are not squandered on ineffective efforts. Annually, the United States spends well over $40 billion, arrests about a million people and drugs are still as easy to come by as they ever were.

Joe Biden’s RAVE Act will work to land even more citizens in jail. Under the new law, anyone who hosts an event where drugs are found to be present can wind up sitting in jail for 20 years or being fined up to $2 million.

But what is most frightening is the possible impact this law could have on our free speech. Due to the law’s loose definitions and flexible wording, the RAVE Act could easily be used to criminalize any gathering of people. Everything from backyard barbeques to student protests could encounter backlashes from this legislation. Clubs, arenas, festivals, theaters and any other sort of performance venue are a joint away from a conviction under the RAVE Act.

In 1994, the United Kingdom saw the passing of a very similar law (The Criminal Justice Act), which was originally conceived to discourage rave culture and ecstasy use, as an affront to civilians’ right to protest. After a resulting riot in downtown London and heavy protesting, the act was killed. Now British corporations rush to sponsor raves and small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some areas.

The possibility of a similar outcome in the United States seems improbable. But electronic acts and DJs have already seen a decrease in venues willing to host anything that could be affiliated with rave culture. The RAVE Act goes as far as to say that chill-out rooms and the sale of water at shows prove that owners and promoters are aware of and endorsing drug use at their shows. Selling massage oils, glow sticks and pacifiers are also supposed to indicate the presence of drug abuse.

But these actions will only drive rave culture underground, into abandoned warehouses and other more dangerous locales — places where water may not be readily available, making any ecstasy use possibly deadly as a result of its effects on core body temperature and heart rate.

And two more bills have already been proposed — the Ecstasy Awareness Act and the Clean-Up (Clean, Learn, Educate, Abolish and Undermine Production of Methamphetamines) Act. Apart from demonstrating an intense skill at creating over-the-top acronyms, both bills would broaden the affective range of the RAVE Act.

Drug policy in our country will not be undergoing any drastic changes in the near future. Even in Wisconsin the last major reform took place in 1989, when sterilized needles became available without prescription as a precaution against AIDS and other blood-born pathogens. And as soon as Canada announced the possibility of decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana, Bush threatened to cut it off from all trade with the United States, which would be a serious detriment to its economy.

But restrictions on the freedom of speech cannot be tolerated, and although the United States will never become a capitalist Druggachusists or larger version of Amsterdam, the possible implications of anti-rave legislation as a limitation on free speech should be understood and fought.