The Town of Eckville will be “dusting off” their Community Standards Bylaw to look at making changes to make it applicable to marijuana comsumption.
The substance becomes legal on Oct. 17.
Up until the Town’s council meeting, Chief Administrative Officer Jack Ramsden said there hadn’t been any major signs of concern or as a big issue until the meeting Tuesday night.
In order to ease these concerns the necessary changes will be made to the Community Standards Bylaw.
“It’s a fairly new bylaw and we’ll make some changes in that because that deals with smoking and whatnot,” said Ramsden. “It hasn’t been a big thing to talk about as much in a lot of the smaller communities.”
“At this point I really don’t know where we’re going to go,” added Ramsden, “whether it’s really going to be an issue we’ll have to see.”
The CAO also pointed out that you already can’t smoke in most places.
Alberta provincial legislation covers non-smoking areas already, like away from businesses and entrances, which is what most municipalities rely on.
If the Town were to make a bylaw, then comes the issue of enforcing it.
“We at this point we don’t have as big of a presence for RCMP, for example, as Sylvan and we don’t have any Bylaw Officers on contract from the county, so that will be one of the factors that I will be [bringing] to council,” explained Ramsden.
At this point, Ramsden said he is not sure how exactly to approach it until the legalization takes place and council can see how it settles in with the Town.
“I think part of it is seeing what really happens,” said Ramsden.