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UCLA Student Died Of Ecstasy Overdose At Rave, Officials Confirm
The L.A. County Coroner's Department has ruled that an ecstasy overdose caused the death of an 18-year-old UCLA Student last August at a rave that took place at the Pomona Fairgrounds, according to the L.A. Times.
Today, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors is also considering new legislation to more stringently regulate raves and other electronic music festivals across the county. Per KTLA, there have been at least 21 confirmed drug-related deaths nationally at festivals hosted by Los Angeles based promoters since 2006.
Tracy Nguyen, who was from West Covina, was about to enter her second year of college when she died of an overdose at HARD Summer on August 1st. Another woman, 19-year-old Katie Dix, is also suspected to have died a drug-related death at the same event, though the coroner's department has yet to release an official cause of death.
In total, the two-day HARD Summer event last August sent 49 people to seven different emergency rooms across Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties. The extraordinarily high number of hospitalizations, along with similar patterns of death and hospitalization at other raves, is what's prompting L.A. County to propose regulating events drawing crowds that exceed 10,000 people.
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Under the March 1st county proposal, moved chiefly by county supervisor Mike Antonivich, promoters would be held to standards establishing a minimum ratio of security personnel to ravers, require on-site medical care, and prohibiting minors from attending the events.
Tony Bell, a spokesman for the supervisor, said to the L.A. Times that though Antonivich "does not want to see raves happen anywhere in the county, this recommendation does address some of the concerns that have been raised with regards to raves."
Rave deaths are unfortunately common. Mixing together thousands of young people, easy alcohol, and easy drugs can often prove to be a fatal combination. Along with the two deaths at the 2015 HARD Summer, another 19-year-old died of a drug overdose in 2014. A San Francisco man also died at the 2015 Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas of an overdose.
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