Public places limited for smoking cannabis
It’s an intoxicating substance and certainly other people don’t want to be around cannabis smoke necessarily.
Cannabis may now be legal in Canada, but choose your spots if you want to partake.
Like tobacco, the locations where the product may be smoked are subject to a raft of restrictions starting with provincial legislation that prohibits its consumption in areas frequented by children, like on or near school property, parks, playgrounds and other recreation areas.
Inside taxis, at bus stops and the common areas of condominiums, apartments, and dormitories that are enclosed or near the building’s a door, window, air intake or workplace are also out of bounds.
The city’s Smoke and Vape Free Places Bylaw, passed in 2016, also took cannabis into account.
Along with many of the restrictions now in place under the province’s Cannabis Control and Licensing Act, the city’s bylaw sets out within six metres of a place of business or a customer service area and within 25 metres of any outdoor sport facility or playground as an infraction.
If you’re caught violating any of those restrictions, you can be fined as much as $100 per offence under the city bylaw and under provincial legislation as much as $5,000 and three months in jail for a first-time violation rising to $10,000 and six months for a subsequent breaking of the law.
The province does allow consumption on designated areas of heath authority property but Northern Health has closed that loophole. Indeed, for years marijuana – the pre-legal term for cannabis – has been noted alongside tobacco as not allowed under its smoke-free grounds policy on any of its properties.
As for University of Northern B.C. and College of New Caledonia, forget about it.
At UNBC, smoking tobacco is allowed at seven designated spots, but cannabis is completely off limits.
“Cannabis may be legal now but it needs
— Barb Daigle, UNBC
to be restricted in a public place,” Barb Daigle, UNBC associate vice president of people and risk, said. “It’s an intoxicating substance and certainly other people don’t want to be around cannabis smoke necessarily.”
UNBC is taking the same position many universities have taken, she added.
CNC communications director Alyson Gourley-Cramer said the college’s substance use and abuse policy was updated in advance of the big day.
“The policy treats recreational marijuana use the same way that we would treat all intoxicants and substances that can lead to impairment – with zero tolerance,” she said.
And what is smoked must have been purchased from a provincially regulated retailer.
None have yet been opened in Prince George although product can be bought online through the BC Cannabis Stores website.
And if you’re out in the public there’s only so much you can carry around – up to 30 grams of dried cannabis or its equivalent. Equivalent amounts for one gram of dried cannabis are five grams of fresh cannabis, 15 grams of solids containing cannabis, 70 grams of non-solids containing cannabis (liquid product such as cannabis oil), 0.25 grams of cannabis solid and non-solid concentrates and one cannabis plant seed.
Edibles and cannabis concentrates are not currently listed as products that can be sold, although the Cannabis Act says they will be added within a year.