Parents, drug policy activists and event promoters say a 12-year-old law drafted by then-Senator Joe Biden is keeping partying teens from getting information about ecstasy use that could save their lives.

The Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, commonly referred to as the RAVE Act, gives federal authorities the power to fine a company anywhere from $250,000 to two-times the gross ticket sales of an event for knowingly and “intentionally profiting” from drug use.

Some say the vague language of the act creates a looming threat that keeps festival organizers from providing drug education at the multi-million dollar events where more than a dozen die annually from ecstasy-related complications.

Emanuel Sferios, the founder of the drug education group DanceSafe, now works with Amend the RAVE Act, a movement started by the mother of a 19-year-old girl who overheated and died after taking ecstasy at an electronic dance music concert in Washington, D.C.

“It’s the bogeyman,” Sferios said. “That fear is really what is driving that sort of ostrich syndrome we’re seeing, where promoters want to put their heads in the sand and pretend ‘there’s no drug use here.’”

One parent’s quest

Dede Goldsmith, the mother behind the Amend the RAVE Act movement, believes access to drug education may have prevented the death of her daughter Shelley.

Shelley didn’t fit the stereotypes of a “drug user.” She was a straight-A student, a University of Virginia sophomore with a passion for healthy living, her mother said.

“Shelley had homework done before she went to the concert, she had her dry cleaning picked up. These are kids who do it right and they thought they were doing it right when they took the drug,” she said.

Goldsmith is lobbying for changes to the RAVE Act that would make it clear that providing harm reduction education at festivals and concerts would not put organizers in the cross hairs of government agencies.

“It’s a bad law, it’s preventing public safety measures that are just common sense things that we ought to do,” she said.

Schools should also play a role in giving youths honest and realistic information about drug use that goes beyond “Just Say No,” Goldsmith said.

How recent deaths have raised concerns

That lack of education may have contributed to the deaths of two teens at this year’s Hard Summer Festival in Pomona. The two teens, Tracy Nguyen, 18, of West Covina, and Katie Dix, 19, of Camarillo, died of suspected drug-related complications, but the coroner has yet to issue a verdict on the deaths.

Nguyen, in her second year studying business and economy at UCLA, participated in the school’s dance club and had enough credits to qualify as a junior. Dix graduated from Coronado High School in 2014.

This news organization discovered last year that while organizers implemented a series of safety recommendations pushed by the county, a key educational campaign dubbed “ahead of its time” by policy experts ended up shelved over concerns it was too permissive of drug-use.

This year’s deaths — the third and fourth at Hard Summer in three years — caused the county to reinstate its Rave Task Force to study ways to limit further loss of life.

To avoid a ban, the upcoming Hard Day of the Dead reduced its tickets by about 20,000 and set a stricter age limit.

A bad education and the death of Beau Brooks

Beau Brooks didn’t know much about molly, but from what he heard, the party drug popular at music festivals and clubs posed little risk.

Ravers favor molly or ecstasy — slang terms for methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) — because it increases their senses, amplifying the flashing lights and bumping bass and energizing them for a long night of dancing. It also increases their heart rate and body temperature, causing some to overheat, particularly as many festivals take place during hot summer days.

In 2014, voters passed a ballot initiative that lessened the charge for possession of ecstasy — and other drugs — from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Beau Brooks, 22, reached out to his friends for information, texting them about the drug not long before his death in June at the Paradiso Music Festival in Washington, his mother Heather Brooks said.

“He was very naive, he was relying on his friends to educate him about dosages, they didn’t know what was proper, they didn’t know what was safe,” she said. “They’re just passing around a lot of bad information.”

The one place he didn’t get information from was the festival’s organizers, USC Events and Live Nation. Live Nation owns or controls a large part of the country’s largest EDM festivals, including Electric Daisy Carnival and Hard Summer.

The coroner attributed Beau’s death to MDMA toxicity, though a sweltering 107 degree temperature and limited access to water likely contributed.

Today, Heather intends to keep a promise she made to Beau when he struggled in school — a promise to never give up on him.

“His life is over — it shouldn’t be that way, it shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “There’s so many things that need to change, there’s so many parts of this that could be better.”

She wants to take on the mega-festivals where teens like Beau die every year, to speak out in the hopes of pressuring them to provide their own education to naive teens considering trying MDMA. The RAVE act shouldn’t be used as an excuse, but if it is a deterrent, it needs to change, she said.

“They’re hiding behind this,” she said. “No one has been prosecuted, their fear is unfounded, and they already know the kids are doing (drugs).”

Why organizers fear the RAVE Act

It’s hard to say if the Drug Enforcement Administration or any other agency ever used the RAVE Act against a festival operator offering drug education on-site, but some organizers stress that the threat — fact or fiction — is too great.

In one case, the DEA arrested and seized land in Missouri used by a Grateful Dead cover band’s front man, but only after he declared drugs okay to sell at his annual music festival. His edict banned only “harder” drugs, like cocaine and heroin, according to court documents.

“It’s sort of like a phantom in the sense that it can be real — it absolutely can be real — but its bark is much louder than its bite,” said Tammy Anderson, a professor of sociology and expert on rave culture. “If I were a promoter, I would be afraid of the RAVE Act, but if I were a promoter, I would also be relieved by it. It sort of gives me an excuse in a way not to provide some protections.”

Anderson said it’s unlikely the DEA would want to use its resources to go after organizers for providing drug education or even drug testing at events, but if enough people perceive the threat as real, it still has consequences, she said.

“They have to be willing to compromise their profit margins in order to stay in business,” she said, noting the underground rave scene “imploded” because of the exorbitant drug use in the 1990s and early 2000s. “They should pay attention to history, you have to invest in some mechanisms now and keep your industry thriving, for all the artists who are making a living as well as the fans who are enjoying the music.”

Dance Safe, a non-profit offering drug education and testing kits to the rave community, often gets steered away because of the RAVE Act.

“Promoters are between a rock and a hard place, they’d like to have more services and provide these on site, but insurance brokers and lawyers advise them not to,” said Missi Wooldridge, executive director of Dance Safe.

Pasquale Rotella, the head of Insomniac, the organizer for Electric Daisy Carnival, said in an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit that they stopped working with DanceSafe, who provides drug testing at some venues, out of fear of a crackdown from the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“It’s already hard enough to find venues where I can organize events,” Rotella wrote. “Unfortunately, some people view partnering with DanceSafe as endorsing drug use rather than keeping people safe, and that can prevent producers from getting locations and organizing events.”

Insomniac does provide some educational materials at its events, including a partnership with the Los Angeles-based Brent Shapiro Foundation, which produces “Save a Life” cards that urge guests to say something if a friend becomes ill.

“I think there is a fear, there is a fear of ‘what are we allowed to do without getting in trouble,’” said Janine Jordan, executive director of the Electronic Music Alliance, a non-profit working to create standards for the dance music industry.

The producers who aren’t afraid of the RAVE act

Some producers, like Gary Richards, CEO of Hard Events, say the law isn’t on their mind. Richards and Jordan are working with Los Angeles County’s task force on EDM festivals to create recommendations for safer events.

“Not for me,” Richards said, when asked if he considered it a risk. “I’ve never read it.”

Richards, who performs under the moniker Destructo, said his company produces events that “follow the law.”

Asked why Hard doesn’t address the lack of drug education at its events, Richards said he’s willing to put out any anti-drug message required by the county.

The Drug Enforcement Administration referred questions about prosecutions under the RAVE Act to the U.S. Department of Justice, which did not respond to a request for comment.