Legal marijuana will be legal in just two weeks – and a lot of mayors plan to ban it in public spaces.
In recent months, boroughs have been hearing from worried parents.
“I ran into a couple with two young kids, and they said ‘look, we come here all the time and we’re concerned that every time we bring our kids here, we’ll be walking by a cloud of smoke,’” explained Alan Sousa, mayor of St. Laurent.
As a result, St. Laurent will be banning pot smoking in all public spaces.
St. Leonard, Montreal North, Riviere-des-Prairies, and Pointe-aux-Trembles will do the same. Pierrefonds, by comparison, will ban pot smoking in parks.
All four boroughs are run by the opposition at City Hall. They say they’re doing it because Projet Montreal hasn’t announced what rules will be enforced when it comes to legal weed.
“We need to react in a way that we take care of the people we serve,” said Jim Beis, Mayor of Pierrefonds.
The City of Montreal says its listened to public health officials, and has no plans to ban pot smoking in public.
The four boroughs join the city of Hampstead, Quebec City, and others that have banned the use of pot in public spaces – however, some public health authorities warn against such restrictions, saying that would just encourage people to smoke pot indoors and spread secondhand smoke.
But Montreal’s mayor is still waiting to see what the CAQ government has to say before announcing its pot plan,
So far, Francois Legault says the legal age to consume cannabis in Quebec will be 21, but hasn’t yet announced if there will be any other restrictions.
