Youth, Drugs, and Nightlife

Youth, Drugs, and Night Life examines the relationships between the electronic dance scene and drug use for young ravers and clubbers today. Based on over 300 interviews with ravers, DJ’s and promoters, Hunt, Moloney, and Evans examine the different social groupings that make up the scene. The authors explore the accomplishment of gender, sexuality, and Asian American ethnic identity and critically analyze the negotiation of risk and pleasure within the world of raves and dance clubs. We learn about young ravers and clubbers’ frustrations with recent attempts to control clubs and raves and their skepticism about official pronouncements on the dangers of ecstasy and other drugs, in this book that pivots between the local, the national, and the global in its approach.

Geoffrey Hunt is a social and cultural anthropologist, who has had nearly thirty years' experience in planning, conducting, and managing research in the field of youth studies, and drug and alcohol research. He is a senior research scientist at the US Institute for Scientific Analysis and the Principal Investigator on three US National Institute of Health projects. He has published extensively on substance abuse, especially alcohol and drug use and evaluating community prevention and intervention programs.

Molly Moloney is a senior research associate at the Institute for Scientific Analysis. Trained as a cultural sociologist, her research focuses on gender, ethnicity, and identity within street gangs and within club-drug scenes. She has published on fatherhood among gang members, on regulating the nighttime economy in San Francisco, on club-drug use among Asian American youth, on gender theory, on global television and television critics.

Kristin Evans has a degree in sociology and psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. As a research associate at the Institute for Scientific Analysis in San Francisco she was project manager of two NIH-funded projects, on "Club Drugs and the Dance Scene" and "Asian American Youth, Drugs and the Dance Scene." Previously she worked on street gang projects. She has published a number of articles with Geoffrey Hunt on gang girls and drug use, and on drugs and the dance scene.