Major Lazer: Teach Kids How to Use Drugs, Shutting Down Music Festivals Won't Help
NYC shut down Electric Zoo after two deaths were attributed to drug overdoses
Earlier this month, Mayor Bloomberg cancelled the last day of the three-day Electric Zoo music festival because of a pair of deaths at the event attributed to drug overdose.
Rolling Stone went to members of the dance hall collaboration Major Lazer presumably to speak on behalf of electronica, which the music magazine writes is "enduring an onslaught of unwelcome attention" in the wake of the Electric Zoo deaths. Major Lazer's Diplo attributed the attention to the deaths and the genre to the fact that "music writers and critics are old" and electronica music is "flat and boring" to them, so naturally they jumped on the drug deaths as a hook. But the Major Lazer duo say its not the music, or the drugs, that's the problem. Via Rolling Stone:
According to Jillionaire, the problem could stem simply from drug inexperience. "It's going to sound weird, but we need to teach kids how to do drugs, the same way we teach them about drinking responsibly and having safe sex," he said. "If you're going to go to a festival, drink water for six days before you get there; don't drink no alcohol. If you're going to do a pill and a half, don't do four more and then pass out, overheat, and die of cardiac arrest. Instead of acting like drugs don't exist, acknowledge that drugs will be at a festival and address them."
"We're such a conservative culture that we'd rather not talk about the things kids want to do, even though they're going to do them anyway," Diplo said. "We'd rather ignore it to solve the problem. In Florida, where I'm from, drugs have been a part of club culture since day one. Kids have always been going to raves in the woods. 20 years ago, Orlando was one of the first places to have rave culture, and we learned how to do drugs. It's going to happen; you can't control it. Persecuting a festival is not going to help it because kids are going to do them regardless. Hell, they'll do them in their houses. That's why crystal meth is a problem in America. Drugs are a big problem in America, because we have money to spend and a culture that wants to be turnt up all the time."
Of course, its not drugs or a "turnt up" culture that's the problem with America, it's the culture of the nanny state, people who want to control what other people can and can't do and other people who want to blame the people who tell them what to do and what not to do for their own poor choices.
Related, watch neurologist Carl Hart on Reason TV explain why the science supports drug legalization and why America hasn't had an adult conversation about it:
