Whyte Avenue businesses call for pause on new smoking rules

Rather than clearing the air, Edmonton’s proposed 10-metre smoking ban could create “giant clouds of smoke” on Whyte Avenue by forcing people into just a few zones where they can light up, businesses warned Wednesday.

Those are the kind of unintended consequences likely if city council quickly approves proposed changes to its smoking bylaw, Cherie Klassen told council’s community services committee Wednesday.

The executive director of the Old Strathcona Business Association called on council to hold off on that part of the new tobacco and cannabis smoking rules at least for six months to one year to figure out how it can be fairly implemented.

But committee did not debate the issue Wednesday.

It’s been contentious for this council. It first approved the changes in a 7-6 vote July 11, then reversed the decision to gather more public input the next day. After Wednesday’s presentation by the public, committee requisitioned the issue for council to debate next Tuesday.

Klassen said businesses in her area are also worried about an increase in litter, worried people will be standing in the street to smoke and be forced to walk into dark, unsafe spaces to abide by the law.

She only had 10 days to circulate a city survey to her members last summer. In that time, she found a roughly 50-50 split from those in favour and against increasing the ban to 10 metres from the current five metres of any window, door or bus stop.

Some businesses want the changes to prevent smoke of any kind from wafting into their shops. Others are worried it will drive smokers away from the avenue to suburban competitors with large parking lots.

“We need to ease people into

We need to ease people into this. Right now there are just a lot of unknowns and businesses are very fearful.

this,” Klassen said. “Right now there are just a lot of unknowns and businesses are very fearful.”

Smoking cannabis recreationally is set to become legal in five weeks.

Council first set out to regulate where the drug can be smoked in public but decided to include tobacco in the debate in an effort to make the rules and enforcement simpler. But Whyte Avenue would be disproportionally affected by the change because it has so many small shops and doorways close together, a feature planners normally celebrate as key to its vibrancy.

Several health advocates returned to committee Wednesday to urge council to take a strict approach against smoking in public. The legalization of cannabis has the potential to re-normalize smoking, they said. This is an opportunity to push further for public health, said Les Hagen, with Action on Smoking and Health.

“If tobacco kills 55 times more Canadians than cannabis, than why wouldn’t we?”