The Solvang City Council discussed amending city code for its smoking regulations during its meeting on Aug. 28. The talks on where one can and cannot smoke in public were placed on the agenda two weeks prior, when council members adopted the first reading of an ordinance allowing a medical cannabis dispensary to operate near the city’s western entrance.
It was at that Aug. 13 meeting the council and public aired concerns about what allowing a pot shop to operate would do to the city’s current smoking regulations.
“The state law stipulates that if smoking tobacco is prohibited, then smoking cannabis is prohibited in those same areas,” Mayor Jim Richardson told the crowd gathered that evening.
Richardson proposed to remove the word “enclosed” from city code under the section prohibiting smoking in public places. In its current form, Solvang code bans all smoking in enclosed public locations with a few exceptions: stage and theatrical productions, as well as certain tobacco retailers, and personal residences. The current code does not specifically ban smoking in hotel or motel rooms because the practice is already regulated by the state.
Richardson said the move would give the city more latitude in keeping open public use of cannabis to a minimum.
“We in the city would be able to cite people that do smoke cannabis in public places where we prohibit it,” he added. “If it’s state law we have to obey, then our code enforcement officer cannot cite them. It would have to be a sheriff or some other police force rather than our own.”
California’s Health and Safety code currently does not permit anyone to consume cannabis in public, except in a few lines under state business code, which provides a pathway for local governments to allow the plant’s use in public.
“I think the mayor’s point is this is a state level regulation and if someone was going to be cited for smoking in a public place, we don’t have a local ordinance that does that,” City Attorney Dave Fleishman said on Aug. 13.
The council met to discuss regulations and city code on Aug. 28 after the Sun‘s press time.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 6, 2018.