11-24-2018, 06:22 PM
(11-24-2018, 05:31 PM)Pheidippides Wrote: $500,000 a year is essentially an insurance policy to prevent things from getting out of hand. Far smaller parties at Queen's and Fanshawe in recent years have ended in rioting that has caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. If the police don't appear to be doing everything possible to prevent a riot then they will be vilified publicly (and probably sued).
That doesn't even begin to cover the hospital costs from these big parties.
Opioids get all the headlines, but alcohol is the biggest drug problem we have as a country. Our society has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol that no one seems to want to acknowledge its true costs ($14 billion per year in 2002 and responsible for more hospitalization than heart attacks).
I probably sound like a broken record, but these behaviours and outcomes will only change with a societal shift around the norms, views, and attitudes towards alcohol. The provincial government's recent decisions around alcohol and apparent fixation on cheap alcohol are doing the opposite.
Spending 500k as an insurance policy on riots which have cost 100-200k seems like a really bad use of public funds.
Do you have a citation for the hospital cost? Honestly, I don't know about real costs. In terms of number hospitalized, St. Patties day compares similarly to other events like Bluesfest and Octoberfest. It's also the case, contrary to the beliefs of so many commentors, that people who aren't students aren't entitled to more or better or more immediate care than the students who may be injured or sick as a result of this event.
Problem drinking is absolutely a social issue, but that isn't exactly related to this event, and honestly, making this into a real event would help eliminate some of these social problems, serving would be more controlled, but mostly, there would be other things to do, food to eat, etc.