City residents should hold fire on smoking pot in parks

If you feel the urge to smoke a joint at Gage Park now that cannabis is legal, be sure to read the fine print once the dust settles.

The rules are still half-baked, but it looks as though toking in Hamilton parks will be just as verboten as puffing on a cigarette at the playground.

The province has proposed changes to the Smoke-Free Ontario Act that would also ban smoking recreational pot in “prescribed” public places and workplaces.

Queen’s Park hasn’t yet enshrined this in law, but it’s expected smoking non-medicinal marijuana “will closely mirror the prohibitions for tobacco use,” noted Kevin McDonald, director of Hamilton public health’s healthy environments division.

“For the first several months of the new legislation, we will be focusing on public education and awareness of where the new prohibitions apply,” McDonald said. “Following this period, we will begin using a progressive enforcement model.”

The changes dovetail with the legalization of recreational pot across Canada on Wednesday.

The Progressive Conservative government is allowing online sales of marijuana through the Ontario Cannabis Store starting Wednesday. But the drug can’t be legally purchased at actual stores in Ontario until April.

The Smoke-Free Ontario Act already bans smoking or holding lighted tobacco in enclosed workplaces, enclosed public spaces and “specifically designated outdoor places in Ontario.”

Hamilton’s tobacco regulations outlaw smoking at a number of places, including parks, recreation centres, pools, beaches, skateboard parks, arenas, stadiums and some trails.

A public health report in September noted the city received 39 complaints about scofflaws in 2015, 28 in 2016, 25 in 2017, and five as of June this year.

The bylaw has been in place since 2011, the report notes, adding that “public awareness” has likely played a role in the drop in complaints, with fewer people smoking on city property.