The presence of drugs at music festivals is an issue that’s gained a boost in media attention recently following the deaths of punters linked to overdoses at events both locally and internationally.
Dance music festivals especially have come under scrutiny following the death of a 23-year-old man at West Sydney’s Defqon.1 “hardcore” dance festival, where 14 more were hospitalised and 84 arrested on drugs charges.
An incident that followed days after organisers of New York’s Electric Zoo festival cancelled the third and final day of the EDM festival after two punters died with MDMA found in their systems.
In light of the tragedies, an American news channel took it upon themselves to tackle the weighty issue by conducting some hard-nosed journalism into the issue by attempting to expose the seedy underbelly of drug culture at dance music festivals, but instead only exposed some severely water-thin reportage.
The intention was strong enough, with Atlanta, Georgia news channel 11Alive smuggling two of their investigative journalists among the tens of thousands of punters headed to TomorrowWorld, the United States spin-off of popular Belgian dance music festival TommorrowLand, as MixMag reports; the execution however, left a lot to be desired. The news team’s best choice for infiltrating a shadowy black market of drug-dealing at the youth festival? Two middle-aged white men…
“Wait until you see what our cameras found,” boasts the 11Alive news anchor in the prologue to the report, referring to a less-than-inconspicuous handycam used by the undercover reporters. And the news team’s best choice for infiltrating a shadowy black market of drug-dealing at the youth festival? Two middle-aged white men who stick out worse in the TomorrowWorld crowd than their outdated camera equipment.
The ‘sore thumb’ reporters wander amongst the EDM festival-goers aksing about the presence of ‘Molly’, the colloquial term for MDMA, and the ease of obtaining the designer drug at the festival.
What they saw wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for the average music festival punter, but yet their report is delivered with the shocked, sanctimonious tone you’d expect of an American middle-class news show, noting that ‘Molly’ was available “right out in the open,” with one journalist quaffing, “I was even asked if I had some,” as the pair “watched people pull baggies out of cigarette boxes and pulled substances out there were not cigarettes.” (shock, horror.)
Other ‘revelations’ from the news report included the presence of security doing bag searches, signage of a “zero tolerance policy” on drug taking, people with drug testing kits, and the groundbreaking info that festival-goers “[wear] signs for Molly, Shrooms, and dance into the night.”
Rather than exposing any kind of source of the drugs, or potential dangers with its availability, 11Alive are content to stereotype TomorrowWorld’s attendees as party-happy drug addicts, while piling on inane questions to festival organisers like: “Where is the Amnesty bin [to dispose of drugs]? Did they patrol? Did they throw anyone out?”
Adding a nice omelette to the egg already on the face of 11Alive is a follow-up report in which the evidence used to damn TomorrowWorld fails (eg. a drug dealer concerned about the purity of his product and volunteers handing out literature about drug-taking precautions), while a Police report confirms only five arrests out of the 140,000-strong audience – and only two of those related to narcotics.
Festival promoter Shawn Kent adds that “there were no drug related medical issues,” while the event was also applauded by local Mayor Tom Reed, “I think they did a fantastic job with the bag searches on the way in. There was more pot smoke at Music Midtown here just a weekend ago,” he tells 11Alive news, who note that TomorrowWorld have earned a 10 year contract the festival. At least that gives the Atlanta news team some time to catch up with reality.
Watch the three minutes of ‘well, duh’ below:
