CHICAGO — Lollapalooza weekend is the worst weekend for underage drinking, a new study says, and nothing else comes close.
Emergency rooms across the city hosted 88 patients related to underage drinking during Lollapalooza last year, more than triple the number of such patients during any other weekend including Halloween, St. Patrick's Day, and Cinco de Mayo, Lurie Children's Hospital said.
Teenagers and hospitals both get slammed during Lollapalooza. [Lurie Children's Hospital]
The reasons why are myriad: the weather is generally nice, and Lollapalooza is a big festival out in the expanse of Grant Park, where alcohol is relatively easy to bring or access. But most of all, there's a culture tied to drugs and drinking during the festival, which is expanding to four days this year, Dr. Robert Tanz, a Lurie pediatrician, said.
"If everybody is doing it, everybody is doing it," Tanz said. "Peer pressure is very powerful."
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One silver lining, the study finds, is that emergency room visits have fallen during recent years. More publicity surrounding binge drinking at Lolla may have caused more parents to intervene, Tanz said, and Chicago police have said they'll step up enforcement of obviously intoxicated teenagers entering the festival.
But with Lolla expanding to four days, the trend could soon change.
"It might reverse the trend, if it doesn't reverse the trend that'd be spectacular," Tanz said.
The Streeterville hospital, 225 E. Chicago Ave., will host a "simulation drill" at 2 p.m. Wednesday with two summer interns playing dangerously intoxicated teens. Aside from changing the festival's age limits or discontinuing drink sales, enforcement and awareness may be the only ways to curb Lolla's drinking culture, Tanz said.
Tanz said there is a "societal cost" to Lolla's ER influx. Hospitals have to staff more physicians and nurses during Lollapalooza, and even then trauma centers may be spread thin when other patients arrive.
"If you have a lot of intoxicated teenagers and young adults and there’s a major trauma, yeah, your staff is stressed," Tanz said. "You have more things to do for more people."
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