The London area's top public health official wants marijuana cleared from the same public spaces as cigarettes

By Jonathan Sher,

A man rolls a marijuana cigarette at a table in Victoria Park as pro-pot people celebrate "420" in the downtown park in London, Ont. on Wednesday April 20, 2016. Craig Glover/The London Free Press/Postmedia Network

Their days of looking over their shoulder for cops are numbered, but pot smokers in Ontario will have someone else to watch out for if London public health officials get their way.

Tobacco enforcement officers should crack down on those who smoke marijuana in parks and near playing fields, just as they do with cigarette smokers, says Dr. Chris Mackie, the medical officer of health for London and Middlesex County.

Mackie wants the health board Thursday to ask Ontario to extend its ban on public smoking in public places on those who use weed, whether as medicine or for fun. That’s further than what the province’s health ministry had proposed — it suggested extending the ban to those who use pot for medical reasons, but not to recreational use.

It’s not about seeking a back-door way to hammer pot users; Mackie wants to protect bystanders from second-hand smoke and youth from seeing examples of any type of smoking.

“The prohibition on the smoking or holding of lit tobacco should be expanded to include the smoking of holding of lit marijuana,” Mackie wrote in a draft of a letter to the health ministry.

Clouds of marijuana smoke wafted through London’s Victoria Park Wednesday, as hundreds of pro-pot demonstrators descended on the downtown park to celebrate 420, an annual event promoting cannabis culture and advocating for the drug to be legalized.

Event organizer Eric Shepperd called Mackie’s plan “too restrictive.”

If adopted, pot smokers — many of them looking forward to the new federal Liberal government’s promised liberalization of Canada’s pot laws — would find themselves, like ordinary smokers, banished from many public places when they light up.

“It does go too far,” said Shepperd, who conceded there are places where marijuana smoking shouldn’t be allowed.

“However, when you’re in an open space with plenty of ventilation . . . I don’t see a problem.”

Wednesday was the first time since 2010 that London police didn’t crack down on the pot demonstration, though cruisers circled the park for most of the afternoon.

“Times, they are a changing,” activist Mike Roy said while park-goers puffed joints and took bong tokes nearby.

Mackie’s request to the board comes as federal Health Minister Jane Philpott used the forum of the United Nations Wednesday to announce the Trudeau government will fulfil a campaign promise next spring by introducing legislation to decriminalize pot.

“I am proud to stand up for our drug policy that is informed by solid scientific evidence and uses a lens of public health to maximize education and minimize harm,” Philpott said.

Hazards from second-hand smoke are similar whether the source is tobacco or pot, said Linda Stobo, who leads efforts by the London-area health unit to crack down on those who sell cigarettes illegally and to persuade smokers to quit and non-smokers not to start.

Smoking of any sort sets a poor example for impressionable youth, she said.

What the ministry proposed would be difficult to enforce, Mackie wrote, since tobacco control officers couldn’t prove whether someone lit up a joint to get high or to treat an illness.

“Individuals caught smoking marijuana in a prohibited place can claim that the consumption is for recreational, not medicinal purposes,” he wrote. “Co-operation may be difficult to obtain, especially in public areas like playgrounds, sports fields and spectator areas and hospital grounds.”

It’s not only marijuana use that’s on Mackie’s radar: He also wants the health board to seek more aggressive tools to combat e-cigarettes and an outright ban on water pipes or hookahs whether or not they’re used for tobacco.

Ontario should ban e-cigarettes in theatrical productions and places where tobacco is barred. Mackie said.

Even herbal shisha without tobacco produces carbon monoxide and other toxins that increase the risk for cancer and heart and lung disease.

At Toronto water pipe cafes, a study found levels of carbon monoxide and airborne nicotine that were hazardous for human health. Air quality was poor, if not as bad, in outdoor cafes.

Toronto, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island all ban water pipes, regardless of whether they’re used for tobacco.

“Water pipe smoking of shisha that does not contain tobacco (creates) an unsafe work environment, contributes to the social acceptability of smoking in public places and is difficult and expensive (to enforce),” Mackie wrote.

Colorado, which legalized pot, prohibits its use where tobacco is banned to protect public health, he wrote.

In the London area, enforcement officers have warned smokers about the ban on smoking in public places but no $305 fines — the penalty the ban carries — have been levied, Stobo said.