The City of Penticton’s planning manager will recommend to city council next week that it should ban smoking or vaping of cannabis in all public spaces when recreational marijuana becomes legal on Oct. 17.
Planning manager Blake Laven says the framework would prohibit smoking marijuana in public, including public streets where an individual is permitted to smoke cigarettes.
Provincial regulations allow people to smoke in public places where tobacco smoking and vaping are permitted, but bans public cannabis smoking in areas where children may frequent, including playgrounds, sports fields, and skate parks.
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Municipalities have the power to further limit cannabis separately from tobacco.
The B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch will be the wholesale distributor of non-medical cannabis and will run provincial cannabis retail stores.
Municipalities are in charge of where those stores can operate. Laven recommends 300 metre exclusion zones around schools, no store within 300 metres of another store in the downtown core and no stores within 750 metres from another store elsewhere in the city.
Laven says there will also be requirements for security plans and limits on hours of operation.
He says the proposed municipal regulations are “very standard conditions seen in other jurisdictions that have approached this issue,” and generally supported by Penticton residents through surveys.
The proposal will be presented to council on Tuesday, July 3.