Article content continued

“It’s the board’s goal to ensure it’s not coming back next year, to this or any other park,” she told the National Post as an estimated 25,000 people gathered to smoke pot at Sunset Beach.

Kirby-Yung didn’t return a request for comment on Thursday, but she shared tweets in which the park board said its costs for the gathering included extra rangers, lifeguards and operational staff.

”It was pretty messy. There was also lots of debris,” said Howard Norman, Vancouver’s director of parks. “Our main concern (Thursday) morning was removing the plastic stuck in the rocks before the tide took it back out.”

The park board sent nine staff members to clean up, a task that included sifting through sand for broken glass or needles. The crew was expected to spend all day on the job, hauling at least three loads in city garbage trucks.

The City of Vancouver hadn’t sanctioned the annual event, for which taxpayers foot overtime bills for police, firefighters and paramedics as well as for parks staff. But organizers agreed to move the event to Sunset Beach after last year’s smoke-in at the Vancouver Art Gallery snarled traffic and saw dozens of people hospitalized.

This year, 16 patients were treated in hospital, all for minor ailments, according to Vancouver Coastal Health.

Photo by Jeff Vinnick / Getty Images

At Sunset Beach on Wednesday, hundreds of vendors sold marijuana and marijuana products, beach blankets, bongs and trinkets.

Sgt. Randy Fincham of the Vancouver Police Department said paramedics and firefighters handled 31 calls. Officers observed juveniles buying marijuana, but Fincham said no arrests of either buyers or sellers were made, in part because of safety concerns police had about entering the large crowd.