Smoking Weed with your Boots On
Smoking Weed with your Boots On
SMOKING WEED WITH YOUR BOOTS ON
Smoking weed with your boots on illegal?
The opening of the CTV News article: “Drinking a beer in your cowboy boots is totally fine, but smoking a joint at the Calgary Stampede is off limits”.
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/national/canada/2019/7/4/1_4495098.html
Organizers of the Greatest Outdoor Show are not necessarily wrong to assert that they are following City Bylaws. For example, the City’s “Tobacco Reduction Act” provides that smoking is not permitted within 5 meters of a doorway, window, or air intake” Calgary’s Smoking and Vaping Bylaw also places restrictions on smoking and vapour in specific public spaces. Most important, however, is that the City of Calgary legislated the Cannabis Consumption Bylaw which provides that the Consumption of recreational cannabis is prohibited in any form (smoking, vaping, or edibles) in Calgary’s public places.
This MaxTV youtube about "smoking weed in public" is amusing:
blanket ban on weed stampeding
A blanket ban on consuming cannabis, however, may create some specific problems. To begin with, the various Calgary bylaws only legislate against smoking weed in “public spaces”; they have no authority over private spaces. So when the spokesperson for the Calgary Stampede Board, Jennifer Booth, claimed that the Stampede is just following suit with City of Calgary Bylaws, she may be correct for some places but incorrect for others. The question is whether the space is public or private.
Cannabis advocates are correct to highlight that there is a difference between recreational cannabis users, -- who may be controlled -- and medical marijuana users who have a prescription for cannabis to treat an alleged medical disorder.
According to the CTV news article, “the Calgary Cannabis Club is pushing for a designated smoking “gardens” to be added to the Stampede grounds. But organizers say that’s not happening”.
What concerns me is the blanket prohibition. There are very likely designated areas for tobacco users, so why not cannabis users? After all, weed is legal in Canada.
David G. Chow
Calgary Drug Lawyer | Calgary Criminal Lawyer
David Chow is a Calgary criminal lawyer and Calgary drug lawyer with nearly two-decades of experience litigating and winning criminal matters. For a free telephone consultation call 403.452.8018.