“I feel like we have let the public down,” deputy mayor Waye Mason says about the launch of Halifax’s new smoking ban.
With hours to go until cannabis is legal across the country, Halifax is admitting that its complicated, city-wide ban on smoking needs some fine-tuning.
“I think we owe an apology to the public for the fact there aren’t enough designated smoking areas on the rollout,” says Mason.
There were only nine designated smoking areas ready in time for the nuisance bylaw’s launch on Monday morning (dozens more have been added since).
“Are we going as fast as we’d like? No,” CAO Jacques Dubé told reporters at City Hall on Monday. “Are we going as fast as we possibly can? Absolutely.”
The Halifax Board of Police Commissioners heard an update on Monday afternoon about how the new legislation will be arbitrarily enforced going forward. According to Dubé and director Kelly Denty, enforcement of the smoking ban will be “relatively light” for the first few weeks.
Bylaw compliance officers and police will engage with any smokers they come across, handing out little cards with details about where smokers can legally light up instead of issuing fines.
“It’s more of a, ‘Hey, did you know?’” said Denty, instead of giving out tickets. “Obviously we’ll do that when we need to but it’s not the initial approach.”
Complaints about smokers can be made by members of the public to 311 from 8am to 8pm. After dark, residents can call HRP’s non-emergency line to narc.
Police won’t likely be responding to those individual complaints, though. Chief Jean-Michel Blais assured commissioners that his officers had more pressing matters.
“We have more important things to do,” said the chief.
Instead, Halifax Regional Police will examine trends and adjust police patrols to those areas where there are problem smokers. Or, more accurately, to those areas where the kind of people who call 311 to report a smoker will feel unsafe.
Fines for breaking the new bylaw will only be issued to repeat offenders who “flaunt the law,” says Dubé.
“I think tickets are a last resort,” adds the CAO. “If people continue to want to flaunt the law, after many warnings, then we may have to impose the fines.”
But the CAO says compliance officers and police on patrol won’t be tracking IDs of those individuals who they give a warning to, leaving it something of a mystery of how officers will know someone has had “many warnings.”
More likely is that whether a ticket is issued will be an arbitrary judgment made by compliance officers and police in the moment. Indeed, Dubé admits the issuing of fines is up to the officer’s discretion.
“Look, they’re all professionals. They’ve been trained,” he says, in response to concerns about the potential for abuse.
Dubé says the officers have already received special training in dealing with homeless residents and have visited “group homes” to talk about the new bylaw.
“The bylaw officers are very sensitive,” he promises.
The Board of Police Commissioners, meanwhile, is still dealing with the fallout from a decade of street check data that documented how a police policy was abused to aggressively target racial minorities.
The smoking ban is yet another tool in that police toolbox when it comes to stopping and carding residents. But Dubé believes it will be applied fairly because cannabis isn’t a black or white issue; it’s green.
“The misuse of cannabis is not necessarily a racial issue. I think cannabis has a broad spectrum of users and I don’t make a connection with the racialized issues at all.”
City hall will be monitoring the smoking ban weekly for “the first little while,” according to the CAO, with the first formal report on its successes and failures coming to council in six months time.
Halifax is spending a $1.5 million on initial cannabis legalization measures, with ongoing costs estimated to be upwards of $3.5 million per year.
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This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2018.
Seems to me like treatment should be an option. Instead of penalizing people for smoking — knowing that it’s a difficult condition to abruptly “kick” — the city should help them stop. Failing that, one can only assume they WANT to fine people, but WHOM?
This is bull shit why you selling if we can’t smoke
they owe us an apology for having the nerve to think they have the right to police what we do with our own bodies.
City council is actively violating Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms with this law. We need more than an apology or tweaking. Mason, Cleary, Blackburn and their ilk should resign. Absolutely disgusting to see that Haligonians are having their freedoms stripped away, just as the rest of the country is enjoying new ones on October 17.
Just burn one and try to stay calm everyone.
So much for a Democratic society, we are becoming more of a Dictatorship and are almost bordering on communism, just my opinion and this goes to more than just smoking!!!!!!
they owe us an apology for having the nerve to think they have the right to police what we do with our own bodies.
Not everyone hates it… It’s been great to walk to work without having to walk through clouds of other people’s cancer. And the city looks so much better without your butts all over the ground. You guys want to smoke, cheers, enjoy… just keep it away from those of us who don’t want to.
Civil rights complaint
I think City Council should focus on bringing things TO Halifax, not taking things away. It really shows a serious lack of leadership and lack of vision. Do us all a favour and start coming up with ideas to bring people here, not drive them away. Oh, and good luck enforcing this, it sounds like not even the police are interested in that. Yet another waste of time and resources.
Everyone needs to relax, it takes time for change . Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated
Question I vape it does not contain nicotine or cannabis so how can it be illegal for me to vape coconut oil with peppermint flavoring
I understand the need for people to feed their addiction(&I meam that not as a slam but rather in a purely neurobiological sense) but I also understand the need not to have my daughter ( who is allergic to smoke ) to have to suffer because she has difficult breathing while walking down the street. My families civil right to health trumps the publics need to inhale natural products (nicotine and cannabis)
Smokers have a right to pollute their body.
OK. So what about the rights of those with chronic lung issues? What about those who are negatively impacted by smoke, chemicals, scent? Where do the rights of a smoker end, and the medical needs and rights of others begin?
I am a former smoker and I dislike this law mostly because it is unenforceable, especially with limted police resources. I also understand the sentiments of those who believe they have the right to do what they want with their own bodies. However, smoking cigarettes doesn’t just affect your bodies, it affects those around you who choose not to smoke. If you are considerate about that, I am more than happy to be considerate of your right to smoke.
Mary, you can’t take away the rights of one group to give it to another.