Repeal of municipal smoking bylaw weighed by SPC

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on March 11, 2022.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Fans of ‘Smokin’ in the Boys Room,” either the Motley Crue version or Brownsville Station’s original, were probably disappointed in 2007 when the City of Lethbridge adopted a bylaw that regulated smoking in public places.
When that bylaw came into effect many will remember the night Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Canadian rapper Belly hit the stage at the Enmax Centre, a bylaw that didn’t stop fans from creating a haze from more than one type of smoke.
A recommendation was made Thursday by the Community Safety Standing Policy Committee to city council to repeal that bylaw.
But fans of either version of the song or smoking anywhere indoors shouldn’t rejoice because the province’s stronger rules make the City bylaw redundant.
That’s the reason council is being asked to repeal it, Duane Ens, general manager of Regulatory Services for the City told the SPC.
In 2008, a year after the city introduced its bylaw, the province put in place even stricter rules, Ens said.
And on July 21 last year, the province’s Tobacco, Smoking and Vaping Reduction Act tightened regulations even further.
“We’re repealing the bylaw. The reason we’re asking that is because when the issue came up, we realized it was in 2007 the City of Lethbridge passed their smoking regulations and they had a number of unique things such as patio renovations and stuff that businesses went out and did and everything else. It wasn’t more than a year later, in 2008 the province came with much more restrictive rules in place. We had lesser rules and the province came in and it basically made our bylaw redundant.
“The province has now in 2021 actually increased even further some of the restrictions in this area and they’ve actually put resources into enforcing it so when we looked at this, we said our bylaw’s kind of redundant and it’s kind of confusing to the public at large that we have this bylaw in place,” Ens said.

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