Music Festivals and the Drug Deaths Associated with Them

music festivalIt’s possible that most people who plan to go to an outdoor music festival also plan to use drugs or drink while they are there. It’s almost like drugs and music festivals go together like peanut butter and jelly. Unfortunately, this practice regularly results in one or more deaths.

Not every festival results in deaths. But in the Southern California area, the death of a fifteen year old girl in 2010 resulted in a serious crackdown on drugs at these events. The particular event at which she died – the Electric Daisy Music Festival – was banned from California and moved to Las Vegas. Despite this move, in the next four years, four more people died as a result of their drug use at music festivals in Southern California.

An attorney for the family of one of the people who died made a statement that may be all too true: “I think that any time a promoter is going to put on an electronic music festival, they need to have body bags, because people are going to die.”

According to the Press-Telegram, not every major music festival has a death on its record. They report:

• The event Hard Summer had two deaths since August 2013 with 35,000 attendees each day.
• Coachella recently had its first death in ten years, with 90,000 attendees per weekend.
• Nocturnal Wonderland had one death in 2013, with 40,000 attendees every day.
• Stagecoach had no deaths in 2014, with 50,000 attendees per day.

After the 2014 Electric Daisy Music Festival was held in the Las Vegas area, three deaths were associated with the event. One person died while staying with a houseful of people planning to attend the event. Another person collapsed while leaving the event and a third person was found unconscious after leaving the event.

The safety of our teens and young adults is at risk when they attend these huge events. If they truly understood the hazards of the drugs that are routinely used at these events, then perhaps they would learn how to enjoy a music festival without drugs or overindulgence in alcohol.

This raises the question once again that America does not greatly endorse sobriety as an enjoyable, productive way of life. Our advertisements, our celebrities, our entertainments often feature unrestrained drug and alcohol use. There is very little on the other side of the scale to inspire our youth to enjoy a sober life. Not since Nancy Reagan and her supporters who forwarded the “Just Say No” message. Many detractors claim (and I’m not sure what proof they have for this) that the Just Say No message was not responsible for the large drop in drug abuse that was seen in her years and for a couple of years after Ronald Reagan left office. Perhaps that’s so. Or perhaps there were no studies to show that this campaign actually worked. But its worth a look at the fact that when the society and culture surrounding our youth repeated this message endlessly, along with many straightforward education programs in schools, drug use went down.