Banning the bud

Smoke travels. That’s what it does.

Moves along vents. Travels up, down and through air handling systems.

In an apartment building, hints of fugitive cigarette smoke from a nearby balcony can find its way in through an open window. Someone cooking downstairs can make your mouth water upstairs.

And those are milder smells.

Then, there’s the looming and pungent question of cannabis use. The drug will be legalized in October, and in this province, provincial legislation will limit smoking to private property. That’s all well and good if you own your own home, but what about if you’re a renter?

Landlords nationwide have been dealing with the question of how to handle tenants who might smoke cannabis, and how to keep that smoke from disturbing other tenants’ peaceful enjoyment of their own rental units.

In Nova Scotia, one large landlord, Killam Properties, has started notifying tenants that Killam won’t allow either cannabis smoking or cultivation in at least one of its properties. (Killam, by the way, has a substantial number of rental properties in the province, in St. John’s and in Grand Falls-windsor.)

That’s absolutely in line with that province’s cannabis legislation.

“A landlord may, upon four months’ notice given to the tenant before April 30, 2019, change its rules that apply to the residential premises to establish, as a consequence of the legalization of recreational cannabis, rules restricting the smoking, as defined in the Smoke-free Places Act, or cultivation of recreational cannabis in the residential premises,” the Nova Scotian law says.

In this province, the rules aren’t so clear. While the subject may come up again when the province finally completes its regulations, right now, it’s not directly addressed, and that makes it a bit of a grey area.

The province’s position seems to be that landlords will be able to forbid marijuana use in their units — and perhaps the growing of marijuana as well — by giving notice of an impending change in terms three months before a unit comes up for lease renewal. (In cases where there isn’t a lease in place, a landlord will have to give three months’ notice of a change of terms for the rental.) In other words, it would be like any other change in a lease: “If the tenant is not agreeable to the new terms of the rental agreement, the tenant has the three months’ notice to secure other accommodations,” a Service NL spokeswoman told The Telegram in June.

If there’s one thing that you might take from Killam’s actions in Halifax, it’s that it’s pretty clear that landlords are taking a hard look at the smoking of, or growing of, cannabis on their properties.

And what’s happening in Halifax is likely only the start of a much broader response by landlords concerned about their properties and their other tenants.