CTVNews.ca Staff, with a report from CTV's Alberta Bureau Chief Janet Dirks
Drinking a beer in your cowboy boots is totally fine, but smoking a joint at the Calgary Stampede is off limits.
Organizers have banned the consumption of cannabis on Stampede grounds for both recreational and medical users. Weed is allowed to be brought into the event, but individuals will have to exit the gates to smoke it.
Organizers say they are simply following a Calgary bylaw that prohibits smoking cannabis in public spaces. But critics say the decision is heavy-handed and unfairly penalizes medical marijuana smokers, who are considered an exception in the city’s public consumption bylaw.
“It definitely shows that they are behind the times, cannabis has been legal for almost a year now,” Gordon Hayes, director of events with the Calgary Cannabis Club, told CTV Calgary.
Recreational cannabis was legalized last October after the Liberal government passed Bill C-45, also known as the Cannabis Act. Several provinces, including Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, P.E.I., and Newfoundland and Labrador, have passed laws banning public consumption of weed.
Calgary passed its bylaw six months before weed became legal nationwide.
Anyone who tries smoking weed at the Stampede will be asked to stop, organizers said, but no penalties are in place.
“We're just following suit with the City of Calgary bylaws and as a public gathering place for the community and a real focus on families, we've decided not to apply for a special event licence,” Calgary Stampede spokesperson Jennifer Booth said.
Even so, advocates raised concerns about medical cannabis users. They say that not allowing a person to consume medically-prescribed weed could violate their Charter rights.
“Leaving the site to medicate is not always an option for people who are severely ill,” Hayes said.
The Calgary Cannabis Club is pushing for a designated smoking “gardens” to be added to the Stampede grounds. But organizers say that’s not happening.
cfox0835 on July 5th, 2019 at 15:49 UTC »
Everyone is missing the real reason they're doing this: alcohol sales. Events like these get huge sponsorships from big alcohol companies like Budweiser, Smirnoff, etc to sell and advertise their products to drunk stampede goers. I'm sure the organizers either realized or were directly told that allowing weed to be smoked at the stampede would negatively impact alcohol sales, due to the fact that people would be getting stoned rather than drunk off of sponsored products. So they just ban weed completely to keep the big sponsors happy and keep the people drinking.
2xCheesePizza on July 5th, 2019 at 13:39 UTC »
Wouldn’t it make sense to just have a smoking area (for tobacco and weed)? Seems like a small and reasonable concession...
kowell on July 5th, 2019 at 13:34 UTC »
Quebec City's summer music festival also recently announced that weed would be banned on the premise and people found with weed an entry points would be asked to discard it.
However they also implied that anybody caught with weed within the site would not be removed from the site as long as they didn't disturb people around them. So basicaly, we don't want weed on the site but if you do manage to sneak it in, please be civil about it.