By Vanessa Broadbent

Osoyoos Times

What was intended to be a discussion about where cannabis can be smoked publicly within the Town of Osoyoos resulted in what could end as a crack-down on smoking cigarettes in public.

On Monday, Osoyoos town council was presented with the option of starting a process to update existing bylaws to clarify that smoking cannabis or vaping is not allowed in areas where smoking is already banned.

In the Town’s Parks and Community Facilities bylaw, smoking is currently defined as, along with cigarettes, cigars and pipes, including “smoking material of any kind that creates smoke that is taken orally.”

Director of Corporate Services Janette Van Vianen suggested that the definition be amended to include cannabis and vaping.

She also recommended that the existing bylaw, which prohibits smoking on any parks or trails, unless in a designated smoking area, be changed to exclude all smoking from parking lots adjacent to parks, and disallow cannabis from designated smoking areas.

“The question has arisen whether it includes the parking lots that are adjacent to parks and that’s where we want to make some clarifications so that people can’t just go from Gyro Park into the Gyro Park parking lot and start smoking whatever it is that they wish to consume.”

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Coun. C.J. Rhodes shared concern that not enough restrictions were being placed on cigarette smoke in public areas, and the bylaw amendments should focus more on prohibiting tobacco smoke than cannabis.

“There could be nobody in this world, particularly in our country, that doesn’t see the negative effects of smoking tobacco, similarly, some of the health benefits of smoking cannabis or cannabis use,” he said.

“If we’re going to start adding restrictions with regard to cannabis use and the public, I think we’re distracting away from the real issue which would be more control over smoking tobacco in our community.”

Council also discussed amending the Town’s traffic bylaw to prohibit smoking cannabis in public parking lots and on all sidewalks. Rhodes suggested adding
cigarettes as well.

“Why would we not include tobacco use in that, which has a tremendous negative aspect to our health?” he said.

Mayor Sue McKortoff said she’d like to see more be done to address smoking on Main Street.

“I think we need to be a little more vigilant in managing that, smoking of any kind on Main Street.”

Coun. Myers Bennett pointed out that monitoring public smoking could be a consuming task for the Town’s one bylaw officer.

“Enforcement could be an issue,” Van Vianen responded.

Council decided to wait until seeing a detailed report from town staff before deciding to ban all smoking on public streets and parking lots.