Greetings DanceSafe members & supporters,

For those of you who don't already know, I am currently in my Chinese motherland on a multi-purpose trip. Before arriving to the mainland, I was in Hong Kong for five nights and got the chance to do some fascinating research on the local party drug scene. I visited the University of HK and interviewed Karen Laidler, associate dean of the Social Sciences dept. For years, she has been doing extensive studies on the illicit drug market in Hong Kong. I also got in touch with Cecelia Ho, a social worker I originally met at a conference in Seattle in 2002 who also happens to be one of Karen's students.

On Saturday night, Cecelia and her colleagues had some students in town from the nearby University of Macau. They were to take the students on a tour of the local dance clubs to show them what type of issues they encounter in their outreach work. Cecelia invited me to join them as the DanceSafe representative from America. What an honor, though I was a bit nervous since my Cantonese isn't all that great. But they all said it was fine, and I got to go club-hopping all over Hong Kong for free, so I couldn't really complain. It's hard for me to describe what the venues are like in terms of health & regulation because each one deals with age restrictions, liquor licenses, drug dealers/users, building safety codes, etc quite differently.

Although I got to check out about five different spots, the main one we visited was Cyber 8, which has been operating for about four years, is the hottest & largest club in Hong Kong, and stays open until 8am. The night before, police had arrested over thirty patrons there for possession/sales of drugs. The manager gave us a briefing of how they run the place, had us tour the facilities, and let us take a bunch of pictures. In some ways, it was much like any legitimate dance venue I've been to in the Bay Area, and in other ways, somewhat different. As the DJ switched between house, trance, hip hop, and R&B, more and more people started packing the place up. Security with a metal detector checked everyone in at the door, although they seemed a bit sloppy or lazy cuz they didn't check my bag too hard. Inside, anti-drug posters were plastered everywhere, including in the restrooms.

The one incident that occured which disappointed me was seeing a girl who couldn't even stand up straight. Her boyfriend was trying to hold her up, but to no avail cuz he was just as wasted. A security personnel told him to carry her out. As he tried his best to, and as his friends and people in my group watched him try, this asshole began scolding us to hurry and help get her out. He was simulatenously escorting us out and bitching at us for being useless & slow. Eventually, we got her outside to some fresh air where she got better. She had only drank, and another friend she was with thanked us for helping. Cecelia and I were equally saddened by the lack of compassion and professionalism on the part of that security personnel. There was a time in San Francisco when club security just dumped any fucked up patrons on the side like trash. Now, a lot of venues have on-site EMTs roaming around with security and often make sure you're all right before they kick your ass out. Being used to those type of protocols, I was caught a bit off-guard by how poorly that incident was handled by the Cyber 8 staff. Anyway, several members stayed to booth a table while the rest of us moved onto seeing the other sites. One good thing I can say about Cyber 8 is that they allow outreach booths to set up regularly.

Because the programs that serve youths are government-funded, anything that isn't 100% anti-drug (such as DanceSafe's "harm reduction" philosophy) have zero chance of operating anywhere in Hong Kong. So they are limited to distributing info that only says "Drugs kill," "Just say no," etc (such as the posters at Cyber 8). But they also do other cool stuff such as go to parties and test kids' blood pressure, respiratory rate, hydration levels, etc. Once they get the results on-site, they usually sit the kids down to discuss the results, do peer counseling, and sucker them into becoming a volunteer. Every social worker and student I met that night loves harm reduction. Some of them are former users or dealers from the dance scene. I gave Cecelia a bunch of advice on how harm reduction workers in the U.S. have gained mainstream support from authorities & established insititutions without compromising their philosophy & goals. Hope my words help her.

In terms of raves, they are close to non-existent in Hong Kong, mainly because of police crackdowns. When they did occur, they had many parallels to the Hollywood party scene in the U.S. in the sense that events are generally quite expensive and its participants includes pop celebrities. Thus, tabloid press reports on raves a lot, making media coverage of Hong Kong raves that much more sensationalistic and unreliable. Another interesting fact about the local party scene is that ketamine has surpassed ecstasy in prevalence and popularity. In fact, according to professor Karen Laidler, K can easily be found outside of dance venues, but not E. In addition, she says that most issues around substance use or abuse hasn't changed much because they have just continued at the clubs. In other words, authorities have succeeded at stopping raves, but not drugs.

So now, I'm in Canton where my research & partying continues. The scene is even more interesting here. More to come...