Too Much Red Tape!
Vaping, marijuana & cigarettes. Read about my permit idea!
I want to see the rights and freedoms of businesses and customers to take place once again in Saskatoon. By this I mean that businesses have had their rights stripped of them to allow smoking or none within the walls and borders of their business and customers have had their right to choose smoking or none when choosing a business to attend.
Government and municipalities should never ever think they have the right to tell a business how to run their facility. If a business wants to allow smoking then the business should be able to do so, and if a business wants to ban smoking from their facility then that business should be allowed to do so. If a customer wants to go to a privately owned business that allows smoking then the customer should be able to do just that, and if someone wants to attend a privately owned none smoking facility then they should also be able to do so.
Of course the province had banned lighting up inside restaurants, but the city had also added to these anti smoking laws by making it illegal to smoke on patios. I say “what does any bad habit have to do with government?”. I know we as a city can only change local laws, so we could only change the laws for the patios for the time being. At least if I were mayor I would be in a position to put a little more pressure on the provincial government to try to restore at least some of the rights of businesses and the public.
I want to see a permit system which allows businesses to chose if they want smoking on their patios or not. If the business buys an annual permit from the city, then the business can have smoking on their patio. Why a permit system you ask? When a permit system is implemented not as many businesses will take part in allowing smoking on their patios. This will open up the market, and it will also make it so there are plenty of none smoking patios available in Saskatoon. It will also generate revenue from the private sector.
​
This permit system would also extend to vaping and marijuana. Each substance would require its own permit.
Vaping Since the provincial government changed the vaping laws I now will simply join vaping with the smoking permit as part of my platform.
​
Now that marijuana is legalized in Canada, people will want a place to smoke it. In order to influence people from smoking it in their back yards and bombarding their neighbours with the such an "unwelcome" smell, the best option would be to allow and open up marijuana cafes (with the permit program). This gives outlets and an option to smoke weed in a different place other than just your back yard.
​
The one thing I would consider making mandatory for marijuana cafes is an optional shuttle service for
their customers.