Balcony safety stressed after Canadian dies in Cancun, but what about booze safety?

I buy the occasional lottery ticket, but I never expect to win because I used up almost all my luck avoiding death doing stupid stuff between the ages of 18 and, say, 30.

Most often it involved alcohol, but even blotto, I wouldn't dream of teetering on a high-rise balcony because I've always been afraid of heights. Makes my stomach jump just thinking about it.

Which brings me to Sydney Taylor, the Nova Scotia university student who died this week during a graduation trip to Mexico with some of her Acadia University classmates.

[ Related: Acadia students return from Cancun after resort death ]

Police say the 21-year-old honours political science student tumbled off a third-floor balcony of the resort in Cancun at 4:30 in the morning, CBC News reported. Alcohol, as they say, was involved.

Such deaths aren't unusual among tourists in Mexico, it turns out.

In March, a University of Southern California student on a spring-break trip fell six floors while trying to climb onto an outside air-conditioning unit to get into a room, according to KTLA News. His friends said he'd been drinking.

Twenty-one-year-old Chris Rogers of Edmonton died last January after falling from a second-storey balcony at another Cancun resort around 2:30 a.m. He had been drinking and been punched in the nose during a fight at the hotel bar earlier, then began to hallucinate, the Edmonton Sun reported at the time.

Several Canadians have died in recent years in Mexican balcony falls, though some have been deemed suspicious.

An American political blogger named Tom Flocco claimed unsafe, low balcony rails at Mexican hotels were responsible for the deaths of 95 Americans since 1995. He castigated the U.S. Congress for not legislating safeguards restricting travel agencies from booking tourists into such "death traps."

In response to Sydney Taylor's death, the youth-travel company that organized her holiday, S-Trip, said staff teach "balcony safety" to its clients. Company president Alex Handa told CBC News they always send trip leaders with their student tour groups, "because a lot of our travellers haven't had the same travel experience that older adults have had.

“Even balcony safety is something we bring up in our briefings,” Handa said.

[ Related: Student who died at Mexico resort described as 'gentle soul' ]

“I’ve seen [the Hotel Gran Caribe Real] kick people out of the hotel for climbing a balcony and sometimes people think that’s extreme and they want a refund and they want to sue the hotel, and unfortunately now we know how serious that can be.”

But aren't we ignoring the elephant in the room ... or should I say, the tequila worm?

When we're young and we drink, very often we do really stupid stuff. Add in the liberating influence of being away from home at a sun-soaked resort with ready access to booze and things can get dicey.

A briefing on balcony safety seems curiously beside the point.