The Potential Peril Haunting Music Festivals
Weekend two of Coachella just wrapped up. While the music festival is two hours away in the middle of the desert, Los Angeles is also known for attracting a ton of music festival goers at events such as FYF, Camp Flog Gnaw, and many more. Several people of different backgrounds, young and old, (including myself) enjoy celebrating our favorite artists and musicians. Plus, it's more than just the music. Food, art, camping, merchandise, free stuff, and of course spending quality time with close friends all contribute to an incredible musical experience! These festivals can be super fun and entertaining; however, sometimes the atmosphere and culture that surrounds music festivals can attract various drugs and drug usage. Many festival goers use, and sometimes rely on, various drugs to enhance and/or intensify their experience and I am not referring to marijuana. Typically, the drugs that are problematic at festivals include: MDMA (ecstasy), cocaine, opioids, alcohol, LSD, shrooms, and other hallucinogens. What is even more troublesome is that inexperienced drug users (and young individuals) tend to experiment in a music festival or concert environment.
There have not been any deaths due to overdose at a music festival in Los Angeles; however, in 2014 at Coachella, a twenty four year old festival attendee from Oakland suffered an apparent drug overdose. She was Coachella's first and only death. In 2016, twenty four music festival goers in Ohio were hospitalized after a life threatening drug overdose. Overdoses still occur at festivals all around the world and they can be attributed to the lifestyle and culture that these music festivals endorse to an extent. Many festival attendees who either overdose or experience alcohol poisoning are lucky to receive treatment immediately which is why the death toll at music festivals has decreased.
I have personally seen several people who either pass out during a set or who were escorted out of the venue via paramedics. Whether they were overdoses or not, I cannot say. What I do know is that drug usage at festivals is almost encouraged and is quite prevalent in a music festival setting. I am curious about the steps that need to be taken in order to avoid ODs in the first place. How do you think music festivals contribute to the drug use/experimentation problem among young (sometimes inexperienced) people? What can music festival runners do to prevent possibly dangerous drugs from entering festival grounds? How do you think the artists with major influence contribute to the drug usage at these festivals? Should drugs be detected upon entering through security? If you have attended any music festival, how thorough was the entrance security? (You do not have to answer every question). Lastly, name an artist that you have seen that you really enjoyed and describe their concert or music festival set.
Drug usage at music festivals is definitely occurring at a problematic level and I agree that the general environment is one that encourages such use - even from the artists themselves. I think that the way usage is amplified the most at festivals is because of a sort of vicious cycle in which it seems like everyone around a particular person is using something so they feel as if they can - and should - too. I also think that a general lack of policing/enforcement makes the environment feel like a safe one to experiment with new things, which can be problematic. It’s a difficult issue to deal with because an increased police presence or increased security check at entrances would discourage many people from going because such drug usage has become an ingrained part of music festival culture. In my experience, the security guards couldn’t care less about pat downs and security checks and just let people walk through casually. Back to the part of artist encouragement - I can’t remember what drugs they were in particular, but during numerous artists’ sets, they’ve said things like “get loud if you’re on ______,” which of course makes attendees feel like they can only be cool if they are too. Anyways, I would say that the best performance I’ve ever seen was Frank Ocean at FYF in 2017.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I haven’t gone (and don’t have any real desire to go) to a music festival like Coachella or Camp Flog Gnaw at least in part due to the environment that Cole talked about in his post. I definitely get the sense that drug use is glorified and almost viewed as a necessity at music festivals like Coachella, but I think the same could be said (to a lesser extent) for how drug culture has permeated our daily lives; after all, you can’t listen to the radio (or any random selection of popular songs) on the way to school without hearing at least a few references to the artists’ drugs of choice. In that sense, I think some of the problem is out of the hands of the music festivals– as venues for people to go and enjoy the trendiest artists (meaning those who create those popular songs), drugs are inevitably going to be a central topic.
ReplyDeleteOf course, because I don’t actually know what the set up of these festivals looks like, I don’t really have any idea of what festival organizers could do to stem the rampant drug use. I don’t even know if that’s what they should be focusing on in the first place (as opposed to building up really solid medical services to support those who need them) because, as Lux pointed out, the freer drug culture seems to be one of the most important aspects of music festivals for many attendees. And on a different note, my favorite concerts that I’ve attended have probably been the times I’ve seen J. Cole because there’s something almost magical about knowing every word of every song and looking around to see that everyone around you does too, like it’s just such a bonding experience (idk if that even makes sense).
I recently read about this in the context of college music festivals, which are super common around the country- basically, colleges will invite musical artists to perform at mini-festivals for the students, and often they’re a major social event where drug and alcohol usage are commonplace if not expected of most attendees. Recently, there was a lot of online debate because a college festival banned drugs and alcohol inside the festival grounds because of a series of alcohol poisoning incidents in recent years where students were hospitalized. However, a lot of people pointed out that their move might not really help address the problem because it wouldn’t actually stop people from drinking or using drugs— the only difference would be that, instead of bringing stuff with them to the festival and consuming it over the course of several hours, they’d binge drink or take huge doses of drugs prior to arriving in order to be drunk or high during the concert. The concern was that this practice, where students would “pre-game” for festivals more intensely, raised some concerns about alcohol poisoning and overdoses because students would be drinking or using more at once. Anyway, I think it’s an interesting dilemma to consider and a clear example of the complications that arise from music festival policy on substance use.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that's been said. Drug usage at festivals is definitely a problem and I have personally seen people at festivals who pass out/ have to be escorted out/ look like they are really out of it I don't really know what the solution here is, I mean if people really want to take drugs at a festival I don't really think security will honestly stop them. And like Lux mentioned, I think tighter security at festivals could discourage people from going for various reasons: festivals sort of promote an atmosphere of drug use, communities with historical issues with law enforcement might not feel as welcome, etc. With the people I have seen at festivals, most of the time they are reeeeeallly out of it ( i.e. on some serious hard drugs) but definitely another layer to the drug use at festivals is using marijuana, especially since it's so accessible in LA. Also it seems like certain festivals maybe tend to attract more drug use than others? I don't actually know how accurate this is, but at least to me Coachella and FYF are two very different scenes
ReplyDeleteOn another note - another huge problem at festivals is sexual harassment, which happens all the time but is really hard to address in the moment for a variety of reasons. This story came out last year about it and I think it's really relevant now as well: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/sexual-harassment-was-rampant-at-coachella-2018
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ReplyDeleteI’m not sure how music festival runners accept people into the concerts but a bag checkup probably wouldn’t hurt. Since I don’t know how the security works at large festivals, this article https://www.festivaults.com/blogs/news/what-is-security-like-at-coachella kinda surprised me. It seems like they take security very seriously. “You can either get a line with chill kiddos that glance into the car to make sure there isn’t an illicit elephant hiding in the trunk or you can get a guy that’s shining his flashlight into the wheel wells of your 2005 Honda Civic.” Even if one gets past the front lines because of a security guard that's really chill, there are several precautions that are taken even after one is past all the security. I am curious to know how people even get drugs past all that security mentioned in the article. However, if a large number of people get drugs past the security and are using them at the concert, I can see why inexperienced people might want to try out something that everyone else might be using.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that's been said. I think it's a really hard line to walk between wanting to crack down on drug use at festivals and not wanting to make it so strict that people don't want to attend/ are scared to seek help in the event of an emergency/ have disproportionate policing or arrests against POC like is usually the case in any kind of action to combat drug use. I went to a festival where there was this kind of stupid campaign where they passed out stickers/temp tattoos that said "Under the influence of Music",so it's clear that the people who run these festivals are also flailing to find a good strategy to minimize drug use. To answer your question about how artists impact drug use at festivals, I saw the rapper Skepta do a set at a festival where he was saying stuff along the lines of "y'all are so drunk & rowdy I love it", kind of perpetuating the idea that you need to be drunk at a concert/festival to have fun or have enough energy that the musician enjoys performing for the crowd. To another one of your questions, there was absolutely zero entrance security, but they would occasionally fine people if you were caught with weed.
ReplyDeleteLastly, my favorite festival set I've seen was probably Anderson Paak. He was dancing around (with a huge smile) the whole time and did a couple incredible drum solos.
I agree with everyone that it would be hard for concerts to crackdown on people without it feeling like the TSA, which would in turn lead less people to attend those concerts/festivals, but at the same time, it is important that concerts don't allow use of serious drugs such as heroin, crack, and coke. I think that finding the balance between not being to hard on security but also having enough security to ensure people don't sneak drugs into the concert is a hard thing to find, but is necessary to prevent deaths at concerts.
ReplyDeleteI personally have never been to a concert, but defeintly plan on going to plenty over the summer and in college. My dream concert, not that it would ever happen, would be a Ski Mask x SOB x RBE concert.
I personally have never been to a music festival, and that is mostly due to the fact that I have never thought it was worth the price. It is also due to the fact that my parents have discouraged me from going because of the drug culture and the high prevalence of sexual assault. I agree with what others have said already. It seems impossible to control the drug culture from a security perspective. Maybe if there were more advertisements that encouraged people to be safer with drugs and help those around you who look like they are in trouble? Like ad boards and stuff like that around the festival...? Other than that, I feel like it can't be controlled on a mass scale. I also wonder what could be done to combat sexual assault at festivals like this...
ReplyDeleteI am not sure what security is like at festivals; however, at concerts they briefly check your bag. It’s fairly easy to sneak in drugs. Every time I go to a concert, I always smell weed. I know that it’s also popular for people to use other drugs such as LSD, and honestly, I think artists kind of promote it directly or indirectly. For example, A$AP Rocky may not explicitly tell his crowd to use LSD, but if he’s performing “L$D”, there will probably be a rise in the number of people using LSD in his crowd.
ReplyDeleteAnd my fav concert was probably seeing Ozuna <33.
I, too, agree with everything that has already been said. While completely prohibiting the use of drugs at music festivals would probably deter the public from attending, I do think that certain drugs should not be allowed. Again, like most people have stated, the roots of this issue lie in the atmosphere of music festivals and basically what they stand for. Essentially, music festivals are a place for people to be young, wild, and free (haha). Another issue is that at music festivals people tend to share drugs without knowing what’s actually in them which is a whole other issue. Thus, I feel like if security were to crack down on harder drugs some of the issues would be fixed. I remember when I went to a music festival the security was not intense at alll, which seemed weird considering how big of an event it was…
ReplyDeleteI haven't been to a music festival myself but I know from others that especially at some festivals like raves people are very caring and it's more of a safe space where people take care of each other. I also know that experimentation is also encouraged among the people that go to festivals which is not necessarily a bad thing but it could be dangerous for a person if it is their first time trying it because they do not know their limits. I also agree with mostly everything that has been said, I believe security should prohibit harder drugs or have better searches but not a complete crackdown. Also my favorite concert was seeing Rihanna.
ReplyDeleteFrom the concerts/music festivals I've attended, I completely agree that drug use is often encouraged. While I do agree that most drugs should not be permitted within these events, I don't think there's really a viable solution to this issue. I've seen some campaigns launched to try and stop this issue, but I found most of them seem very out of touch with the real problem at hand. For instance, the managers of these festivals and concerts often push for tight security to catch people who are doing drugs, but the artists performing will smoke weed in front of the whole audience (Not to mention they often give some away too). It's this weird dynamic that makes something like this so challenging to address.
ReplyDeleteLastly, my favorite concert was probably Drake x Migos because Travis came on stage and then Lebron James came on and I was just so confused but so happy...yea....
(this is Simone btw) I personally have never gone to a music festival in the Coachella sense, however, even at certain concerts I have been to (Beyonce, Pompeii, and Mt. Joy) I have seen people ingest a large amount of liquor and drugs as well as smelling the strong scent of weed in the area. I know I have been to certain concerts where your bag is searched; however, I don't know if drugs would be taken away if there were visible in the bag.
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