IN DEFENCE OF POT LOUNGES
The mayor is wrong on allowing legal pot cafés, and here's why
Mayor Jim Watson won’t support the idea of legal lounges where people can smoke pot.
That’s not even remotely surprising: Watson’s a cautious, conservative mayor when it comes to social policy. He doesn’t want to make it easier for anyone to smoke anything in lounges.
If his view wins the day, there won’t really be anywhere in Ottawa to smoke pot, because politicians at Queen’s Park have banned smoking marijuana in public places.
The only place where you’ll legally be allowed to smoke marijuana is in your home. This is rather likely to cause a substantial problem for landlords and apartment dwellers, who would have to put up with the stoner next door making the entire establishment smell like a skunk run over by a semi truck.
Now, not to get too philosophical here, but the harmonious functioning of society requires each of us to go about our business in ways that negatively affect the lives of others as minimally as possible.
In other words, it’s just plain polite to step away from a doorway while smoking a cigarette, in addition to that being the law. When it comes to marijuana — a substance I find significantly more noxious than tobacco smoke — the polite thing to do is to smoke where it will least affect your neighbours and fellow citizens. Now, where might that be? Aha! A smoking lounge.
If we agree that smoking marijuana on a city street is obnoxious (which it is, even if it shouldn’t be illegal) and if we agree that there is some level of grossness to fumigating a communal living space, such as an apartment (which there is) then the obvious solution is to have people who engage in this disruptive behaviour, as much as possible, congregate in an area where said disruptive behaviour is least likely to be disruptive.
Which is to say … a smoking lounge.
Not only will this help maintain a more harmonious, less putrid society, it will also avoid the complications of police or bylaw officers confronting marijuana smokers who light up in public. It will also minimize — to some extent, this is imperfect — the smoking issues landlords and neighbours deal with.
This, for a politician, would be an admittedly awkward proposition because it raises the very good question of why pot lounges, but not cigarettes or cigars or hookah lounges? Quebec has cigar lounges, for example, and business owners should get to make their own choices about hookahs, cigars, pipes, bongs, cigarettes — you name it.
In an ideal world, the whole marijuana brouhaha will lead to a backlash against government busybodies who think they know best for regular people who want to smoke, or who are willing to work in environments that aren’t altogether healthy.
The larger point is that smoking lounges solve far, far more problems than they create.
Because that’s where this battle could be lost: Those who would be employed in marijuana lounges. “This would also put the health of workers at risk by inhaling second-hand smoke,” a statement from Livia Belcea in Watson’s office said.
It’s an old play, hearkening back to the heady days when the anti-smoking movement had started to win its crusade. Never mind that people have choices in society, such as where to work and what they’ll tolerate in said workplace.
The larger point is that smoking lounges solve far, far more problems than they create. Even now, Ontario landlords are asking government for the ability to ban pot smoking, even in leases already signed. And, in Colorado, where public smoking is banned, it has caused trouble with police going after those who have nowhere else to smoke.
Smoking lounges, while not eliminating these problems, would help mitigate the unpleasant side effects of marijuana legalization.
This may not matter to those who own their houses — but to the rest of us, keeping the smoke somewhere else is a quality-oflife question, and Watson, with the position he holds, is going to make things worse, not better.