Filed by KOSU News in World News.
July 23, 2011

A city councilor on the island city of Victoria in British Columbia says she’s found a new way to keep drunken bar patrons from becoming violent once the bars let out: lollipops.

Councilor Charlayne Thornton-Joe says she and others passed them out to inebriated partygoers as they exited pubs on Canada Day this month.

There are no scientific statistics to show that the lollipops actually prevented fights, but, she says, the bar patrons calmed down.

Although it seems like a new idea, she says, it’s been used before in the U.K. and Vancouver.

“[A lollipop] reduces noise because you can’t really be making a lot of noise when you’re sucking a lollipop. And if it cuts down on dialogue that could reduce fights,” Thornton-Joe says. “Late at night … your blood sugar is a little out of whack, so that helps the blood sugar level. And lastly, just like anyone that has given a child a pacifier, it calms and pacifies people.”

Now she wants to make this lollipop exchange a regular thing. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]