While council has passed a bylaw prohibiting the recreational use of cannabis in public, Councillor Tara McFadden wants to see the town take further measures to completely ban all smoking and use of electronic smoking devices (vaping) in the public eye.

On Monday, council passed a bylaw to regulate cannabis consumption in Cochrane and there may be changes coming forward to the smoking bylaw, currently under review, that could impact this legislation.

While recreational use in public places is banned, those with medical certificates will be able to light up, providing they follow the town's smoking bylaw.

Minimum fine for the offnce is $200 and the specified penalty is $400.

McFadden was reluctant to allow the bylaw to pass in one sitting of council but used the opportunity to encourage a smoking bylaw review to come back with a complete ban of smoking in public, whether it be cannabis or tobacco. She believes a total ban would simplify enforcement, but she was more concerned with how the legalization of recreational cannabis threatens to take Canada a giant step backward.

"We've done so much as a society over the last 20 years to understand that smoking in itself, while legal, is really bad for you and it's bad for others," she explains. "While it's something that's legal, it's not something we want to encourage. It's not a healthy habit and marijuana is also not a healthy habit even though it's being legalized."

"So I really don't want us to be allowing any smoking in public. We don't allow drinking in public and we want to make sure that when people do choose to that that they aren't interfering with the pleasure of others, whether that's the smell or second-hand smoke and also just a visible presence of seeing somebody smoke can encourage and normalize that behaviour which is the last thing we want to do if we want to keep a healthy population."

She's disappointed the federal government is delaying the legalization of cannabis edibles to solve part of the problem of smoking in public and she's also discouraged that municipalities will be shouldering the costs of all the ill-effects of the cannabis legislation. It's a position previously expounded upon by Mayor Jeff Genung and funding is actively being pursued by Alberta municipalities. 

Yet she doesn't foresee a sudden surge in troubles in the community because of the legalization of cannabis.

"I don't believe we will be entering into a "pot apocalypse" but if we set the bar high as to what we will allow, then we can understand the behaviour and we can reduce the bar at a later date if we so wish. It's way harder to raise the bar after you've done it. My role is certainly to make sure we update the smoking bylaw in advance of that."

In contrast, Councillor Morgan Nagel sees the value of establishing areas where people can smoke cannabis socially.

"We're increasingly becoming a reclusive culture where people sit in front of their phones, in front of their TVs, all alone at home and don't talk to anybody. And I think now a significant portion of our population is going to start smoking weed and sitting at home all day. I think this is a bad thing and it would be better in a public social area."

The town's online survey on the topic garnered input from 349 residents while a world cafe held at the RancheHouse was poorly attended.