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Smoke clears on cannabis consumption in the MD

Consuming cannabis in the MD of Bonnyville has become a whole lot clearer. The municipality passed their cannabis consumption bylaw during their council meeting on Wednesday, April 10 after months of discussions and research.
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After months of discussion, the MD of Bonnyville has passed their cannabis consumption bylaw.

Consuming cannabis in the MD of Bonnyville has become a whole lot clearer.

The municipality passed their cannabis consumption bylaw during their council meeting on Wednesday, April 10 after months of discussions and research.

“It’s a conservative approach to dealing with cannabis, and it’s only a first step. We had to be careful to weigh out what we could actually police as well,” said Reeve Greg Sawchuk. “Most likely, as we get into this, we will revisit it and maybe make adjustments as time goes on.”

Director of public safety Chris Garner agreed it was a work in progress.

“People need to realize that this is something brand new. It’s never been allowed before, and this is our very first summer coming up. We had to put something in place, but if we find that it’s not working, or that it’s too restrictive, then it certainly is able to be adjusted, it’s just a bylaw.”

When building their policy, the MD considered what similar municipalities were doing, incorporating some of their ideas, but not all.

Garner explained, “We took a bylaw that’s being used by many other municipalities and we were able to really run with it. It’s basically copied from there. Everything in that bylaw is pretty generic as far as the remainder of other municipalities in the province.”

There were some items, however, that set the MD apart.

Garner said not all municipalities have their own campgrounds like the MD, and even those that do couldn’t all agree on the same policy.

Even on a local municipal-level there were some disagreements.

Most surrounded the issue of smoking marijuana in an RV while parked in an MD regulated campground.

“The RV is something that the municipality, we did discuss it, and it was felt that the RV is not really a place that the municipality can regulate what you do inside of your temporary dwelling,” stressed Garner. “Once you’ve paid for that stall and you’re inside of your camper, that basically becomes your home.”

While some councillors such as Marc Jubinville and Mike Krywiak believed if you can consume the drug in your camper, you should be able to smoke it outside on your campsite too, others disagreed.

“We had to be cognizant that we don’t have stalls in a lot of our campgrounds. A lot of our municipal campgrounds don’t have a designated stall, so we do have issues with liquor in those campgrounds, where people will have open liquor and go from place to place within the campground because there isn’t a designated stall. Your typical campground would have a place where you back in and there’s an area where you have the camper and there are trees separating you, it’s really obvious where the stall is. Some of our campgrounds aren’t built like that, they just have an open field,” Garner outlined.

He continued, “The issues we have with liquor is usually after its been consumed and people have over indulged… We don’t anticipate anything like that with cannabis. With cannabis, we could potentially have issues during the actual time of consumption due to the odour, that’s where it differs from alcohol.”

The MD decided to take an approach where they treat cannabis use similarly to drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. No one is allowed to consume the drug in a public place with the exception of their RV in a MD campground stall.

According to Garner, the provincial act covers school zones, hospitals, parks, and playgrounds, among others, however, specifics were left up to the municipalities to identify within their bylaws.

“The provincial act basically covers a few of these things, but they leave it open for municipalities to designate a lot of their own facilities and areas within their own municipalities as public,” he noted. “For example, the province rules a recreation area as public, whereas we actually list what the recreation areas are, for example, the ski hill.”

Cannabis consumption in these areas is strictly prohibited, in addition to other public spaces such as sidewalks, businesses, and roadways.

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