Toronto Bans Electronic Dance Music! Is Mayor Rob Ford To Blame?

mayor-rob-ford-crack-photoToronto has banned electronic dance music.

The Toronto Star reports that city-owned buildings at Exhibition Place will no longer host electronic dance music parties, as a result of a 4-3 board vote on Friday. Advocates of the ban argue that it will make young people safer, saying that ‘drug and alcohol abuse among minors is rampant at electronic dance music (EDM) events’.

Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, who introduced the motion, said the use of MDMA and ecstasy is of particular concern, arguing “this is not what city property and taxpayers’ money should be use for.”

Opponents argued that the ban was bad for business, would drive dance music fans to unregulated underground events, and was driven by the friendship of notorious ‘crack-smoking mayor’ Rob Ford, above right, and Zlatko Starkovski, owner of the local Muzik nightclub.

Councillor Mike Layton, who voted against the measure, said “They’ve used this very emotional argument to improve the financial position of one particular bar owner – that happens to be the bar of choice of the mayor.”

Mayor Ford is not against electronic dance music across the board. Earlier this year, he was filmed ‘beat making’ with Ableton Live:

The Toronto ‘Footloose ban’ seems likely to be fresh fodder for comedians, who’ve had a heyday with the city since news emerged of Mayor Ford’s crack smoking, his initial denial and later admission.

Is there a better way for cities like Toronto to deal with drug use at music events? Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

33 thoughts on “Toronto Bans Electronic Dance Music! Is Mayor Rob Ford To Blame?

    1. its depressing how much hatorade people on this site seem to drink. analog/digital who cares? the only thing that matters is the sound that comes out of the speakers…

  1. hmm. the Jazz scene had Heroin, Rock had everything, drugs are everywhere, it isn’t just EDM. It changes nothing. Rock has brought in more drugs than any other scene.

  2. The city is not banning electronic dance music entirely. As stated, It’s being only banned from the C.N.E. A city owned fairground. The city is huge with hundreds of other venues several of which would be happy to host these events.

    1. So is it basically only banning dance music events from city-owned facilities that are close to this guy’s nightclub? That makes it seem even more like a scam.

      1. Nope…..There are dozens of other city owned facilities that are very close to this and near other viable venues. The promoter will most likely chose one of those….and there is nothing this “guy”, as you put it, or anyone can do about it (non-city owned venues of course)…Electronic music lives well in T.O.

  3. Underlying Mechanism At is Best ..! Slaveries on this planet threaten our very existence by the master controllers who have used fear for thousands of years to keep this planet in bondage.

    My, how they sell it, package it, use it like a weapon, and shower it over the heads of the masses. Fear is the ultimate Weapon of Mass Distortion.

    My religion of choice is music. My currency of choice is knowledge. My politics of choice is none. My society of choice is utopian though we know it will never be.

    My weapon of choice is information. My crime of choice is breaking and challenging whatever laws you feel you need to put in place to stop us from celebrating our existence.

    The music will never stop. The heartbeat will never fade. music will never end.

    AnyWay…!

    Yolgnu.

      1. Thing you can count on with with Slave like You, is…they’re pedantic and frenzied obsession with wringing every ounce of energy out of a thing.

        Don’t Hiss To Hard Sir…!

        AnyWay..!

    1. reading skills not among the dance music enthusiast’s skillset obviously haha… then again its misleading upworthy-worthy headline of course

  4. They should just legalise. The war on drugs can never be won, there just moving the people who take drugs to another place. They can’t stop it so why not legalise, regulate and tax so the huge percentage of young ( and old) drug user, myself included, can stop being harassed. If MDMA was legal and regulated there would be a decrease in related deaths and a lot more parents would be able to sleep better at night. But hey, that’s politics! The scientist understand and politicians don’t want to hear!!

  5. unfortunately these are the ignorant people and their politics that we have to deal with in canada. in north america i find that politicians use emotional issues to distract from a from a major issue or to use the emotional feedback for their own agenda. toronto in the past 15 years has been no friend to electronic music with the “anti-rave” law in 2000.
    the lack of reasoning that these people possess astounds me. it’s like saying, if we ban gangsta rap that everyone will stop smoking crack. if disco was banned, there would have been no coke for nancy reagan to say “no” about (even though cocaine production relies on the CIA) or if we banned the blues that kurt cobain would never have died of a heroin overdose. does this mean that they condone alcoholism, because they support rock and roll concerts sponsored by beer companies? stop blaming music for a persons’ bad decision and lack of accountability, people are responsible for themselves and should use good judgement.
    just to make a point about the generalization and stereotype displayed here… since rob ford smokes crack, obviously these guys on the toronto city council must have been too.

    RANDY HICKEY for mayor of Toronto!!!!

    ’cause he says “Liberry” too, but knows how to use one.

      1. my bad, but you get the point… think of the rock and roll legends that have died from passing out drunk and asphyxiating on their own vomit. does this mean that alcohol should be illegal?

  6. So, alcohol accounts for 8% of all deaths in Canada…does this mean that Toronto is going to start closing bars, or restricting the number of new ones opening?
    I seriously doubt it. Too many people make money off it, it’s an ‘accepted’ part of the culture. Just like here in the states, where cigarettes (and kill people 1200 PER DAY) are legal and manufacturers are NOT required to tell you what additives they use, yet Marijuana (with the exception of WA and CO of course) is treated on par with heroin and crack. Yay money, yay special interest!

    When a government, local or national refuses to act with logic, it makes it that much more difficult to respect them or their laws. EDM is bad, but drunks puking in the street is fine. And Rob Ford arguing against something because ‘drugs are bad’ is pretty ridiculous.

    1. If you want to really blame something for the all-encompassing hatred of music like EDM, blame the proliferation of the ‘classic rock’ radio format-it’s as much to blame for this state of affairs as anything else. That’s what I’m doing.

  7. You can’t blame Mayor Rob Ford for that. He is more popular than Obama right now 🙂 Google it if you don’t believe me 🙂
    A politician needs to point at stuff he did (most of the time useless stuff) for a future electorate. Those people know they are targeting a “small group” of people betting, wrongly, they are too stupid to use the democratic tools in place to fight back.

    1. I agree with your 2nd paragraph, but otherwise this is no popularity contest.

      As for Toronto, all they’re doing is setting themselves up so EDM is played elsewhere.
      People aren’t going to stop dancing or doing drugs.
      I might add that if there were several overdoses at a single venue, it’d be a lot cheaper than if those overdoses happened in individual homes.
      In the end, Toronto will just cost themselves more money, so if they’re not smoking crack, they can sleep better at night with this ban.

  8. I am reminded of the UK during the ’90s. Seems like a “Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 Lite”.

    Which makes me wonder, is chin-stroking, beat-fuckery electronic music still allowed if you can’t easily dance to it? Where is the line drawn? (Though not as severe as the aforementioned law in the UK, I honestly wish this would result in a rise of chin-stroking beat-fuckery).

  9. Back in the day Autechre got around this same type ban by making music that didn’t follow one tempo (I forget which album it was that they supposedly made for this purpose), thus breaking away from the ‘official’ definition of ‘dance music’. Granted this ban in Toronto is only for the what sounds like one particular city owned venue, it would still be awesome for somebody to test the limits of this ban, like Autechre did.

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