No Smoking in Vancouver Parks or on Beaches
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Come September 1st, smokers will need to butt-out before hanging out in a Vancouver Park or on a City beach.
According to the City of Vancouver, “the new policy is part of the Park Board’s commitment to the promotion of a healthy urban environment and support for active living and wellness.”
Smoking will be prohibited in all 224 City-run parks and including all of their properties within such as playgrounds, beaches, pathways, sports fields, golf courses (pitch n’ putt), trails, the Sea Wall and parking lots (not even while inside your own car on park property).
The minimum fine for violating the new by-law will be $250. You can read a full list of frequently asked questions online.
Related posts are under the tag: Smoking Ban
12 Comments — Comments Are Closed
I agree with this in the most part. I enjoy a cigar once in a while but biking into a cloud of cigar smoke on the sea wall is pretty awful. I should be able to have my son play in the park or at the beach without inhaling tobacco smoke.
With that said at what cost to our freedoms do laws like this have? I don’t have the answer, but the level at which a parks boards or municipalities could potentially regulate our behavior is a little scary.
Who’s enforcing this as well? I’d like to see our parks void of needles and dealers before we worry about plumes of smoke from legal substances.
I think It’s really good!! Vancouver will be more comfortable place. Even though I’m gonna leave Vancouver soon.
I’m all for this, but no one is enforcing these rules. Cigarette smokers and bad dog owners leave their filth all over the city and there are no repercussions.
Who’s actually writing the tickets??
I’m not too concerned about the smoking itself, but this will help with the resulting cigarette butt litter. I don’t know why the cops aren’t out ticketing everyone who drops a butt on the ground. They’d be raking in the money hand over fist, and we’d have cleaner cities and waterways. Cigarette butts are the single most numerous item found in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup. They’re trash, and particularly toxic trash at that; why do we (and the police) shrug it off, in a way we wouldn’t with other forms of littering?
Am really tired of the stink of cigarette and weed smoke. Even though there is a ban on smoking in parks in place already due to the dry conditions, we still have to deal with yahoos smoking in the parks. The Fresh Air screening of Back to The Future last night would have been great if not for the smoking (and drinking).
I don’t see the VPD or RCMP really enforcing this. Perhaps Park Rangers, but still. What about the thousands of tourists that flock to our area daily?
I’m tired of seeing cig butts in the sand around my toes when I am at any of the beaches, I’m tired of seeing cig butts along the paths around Lost Lagoon or even the Seawall itself. Tired of seeing cig butts all up and down the streets when there are garbage cans dotted around the busier areas.
I suggest forever person we see smoke/drop a butt, we get to smack them up side the back of the head!
Whatever happened to that no smoking within 6ft of a business entrance or a outdoor patio? I see it all the time, especially with people standing in front of the signs! Good job enforcing that.. why make rules/regulations if they are a) never followed or b) never enforced or both?
If people complain about not enough police etc to enforce it, or it’s just a misdemeanour so don’t bitch about it.. well then don’t make it a rule/regulation/bylaw! 😉
I had to ask some woman to butt out @ the PNE in a roped off area for kids ( the pne is smoke free except for designated areas) she wouldn’t comply until I spoke to an attendant!
Another crazy law made by the eco-friendly granola eating tree hugging selfish western liberal douches imposing their ideal lifestyle onto the masses.
God this city is stupid! What positive effects will this law do? You want less litter in the city, provide more city ashtrays! Instead you take away ashtrays, give the forbidden mentality of smoking, and what do u expect? People become unclassy and used to throwing cigarette butts on the ground without thinking twice. Look at the way modern Europe and Asia impose their smoking laws, but they still respect the smokers by offering ashtrays to be used (because littering is not a good thing to do).
say what you want about weed smokers,but i don’t know any of them who’d drop a roach on the ground! I sit on the beaches and all I see is butts everywhere. It’s gross.
Yet another bylaw introduced into our little Vancouver, aka the city of 10,000 bylaws. Philosophically, this is wrong because tobacco is legal. The government makes taxes off tobacco, the taxes go towards parks maintenance (amongst other things). But now, smokers (who paid these taxes) are no longer welcome there. The moronic makers of this bylaw should decide whether tobacco is legal or not. If it’s illegal, stop selling it and making huge revenues from it. If it is legal, leave it be and allow people to smoke in public areas. Now they have it both ways – you pay the tax when buying cigs AND you pay the fine when you smoke them. It’s a freakin robbery. But hey, this is Vancouver, aka the city where you can’t order a beer in a pub after midnight. Soon we will have a bylaw not allowing eating and drinking in public. This moronic Nazi hell hole is marketing itself as world class city? Priceless…
I think children, pets, druggies and teens should be banned from beaches and parks as well! Then some of the residents of this city won’t have to listen to screaming/whining kids, boom boxes, and clouds of pot smoke, while sitting in a pile of dog poop!! Public parks and beaches are just that PUBLIC. Even smokers come under the category of PUBLIC. We help pay for them even more so than non-smokers through or additional tax burden. Tobacco is a legally purchased and used product. Should the city ever decide to replace the ashtrays they removed from parks and beaches years ago the butt litter would all but disappear.
I love jennys comment.
it is absolutely true that this is ridiculous.
take the ashtrays away and complain about butts on the streets.
no more smoking nowhere,not even in your car on city owned parking lot property?!
the whole world watches documentaries about this city and friends are jealous i am living here now(i came from germany) but i tell them stay where u are.
considered as one of teh best cities to live in the world….
sorry no! it is beautiful city with the surrounding nature but the rules are just stupid