With recreational marijuana set to become legal nationwide in less than four weeks, the provincial government has been hard at work reminding Manitobans where they can and can’t use this drug past Oct 17.
While awareness campaigns are highlighting the fact that residents are forbidden from lighting up in public and in provincial parks, a spokesperson for the province’s Residential Tenancies Branch said that whether tenants are allowed to smoke marijuana inside their own apartments is up to individual property owners.
Teresa Bartz, the resident manager of Thompson’s Highland Tower, said one of the main reasons why she is forbidding recreational cannabis use indoors is due to the apartment’s air exchange system.
“So if you’re smoking it in your apartment, that smoke and smell is going to go through the whole building and because there’s young children and babies in the building we can’t allow it,” she said. “If it was just an adult building we could possibly have a different set of rules and regulations.”
Since building owner Shelter Canadian Properties Limited has not established a cannabis policy at this time, Bartz said she is willing to leave some wiggle room for individuals who want to vape the drug.
Bartz said she could make an exception on a case-by-case basis for people who use marijuana for medical reasons.
Other property management companies have decided to govern marijuana use by lumping it in with their existing smoking policies.
Armour Management president Mike Romani says the company has banned smoking at all of their properties since its inception six years ago. This means that the same policy will be applied cannabis usage at their Thompson properties like Forest View Suites and Ashberry Place.
“Our policy is not pertaining to specifically cannabis. It’s pertaining to smoking in general,” he said. “We don’t allow smoking in the buildings at all. It’s just a fire safety issue.”
A representative of Mihkan Holdings, who asked not to be named, told the Thompson Citizen that they’ve provided non-smoking environments for more than a decade in their nine buildings around Thompson, and that this will continue to be the case past Oct. 17.
However, neither Armour Management nor Mihkan Holdings have any solid policies concerning vaping or medical marijuana usage.
The Residential Tenancies Branch does not anticipate a change to its overall policies or day-to-day operations related to upcoming cannabis legalization.
Two cannabis retailers, Delta 9 and Garden Variety, have already made plans to set up shop in the Hub of the North once legalization takes full effect.