Shops associated with drug paraphernalia in St. Albert will now have to frost their windows and abide by a list of restricted items if they want to hang onto their business licences.
Third reading of amendments to the business license bylaw and the tobacco retail licensing bylaw passed unanimously Monday. This vote came after Coun. Cathy Heron declined to give unanimous consent to all three readings at council’s March 19 meeting.
The amendments to the business licence bylaw include prohibiting any one business from selling products from three or more categories of restricted items, restricting the sale of such products to minors and requiring restricted products to be obscured from outside view. Licensed pharmacies are exempt under the bylaw.
The restricted categories include: any product that displays a marijuana plant, a device intended to facilitate smoking activity, grinders, digital weigh scales, and detoxifying products for masking drug effects or enabling users to defeat drug tests.
Other business licence amendments include giving the licence inspector the ability to add new conditions to new or existing business licences and the power to revoke or deny a licence when it is in “the public interest to do so.” Violators will be faced with a $1,500 penalty.
“In no way did I want it to come across that I was in support of the drug culture,” Heron said Monday.
“I still feel this is quite restrictive but we are where we are.”
Heron used the example of retail giant Bed Bath & Beyond as an example of a store that might be denied a business licence based on the products it carries: scales, grinders and products like hemp sheets.
“A shop like that would not be allowed in St. Albert,” Heron pointed out.
Aaron Giesbrecht, manager of policing services, conceded that, because Bed Bath & Beyond stores don’t have pharmacies, they might unintentionally run afoul of the new legislation.
“We tried to work around that with anything that was a pharmacy but your example was not contemplated,” Giesbrecht said.
The amendment to the tobacco retail licensing bylaw adds certain smoking devices to the definition of “tobacco products.” It also requires that any business selling anything like a wooden or blown glass pipe will now also have to purchase a tobacco licence.
“But most businesses selling pipes will probably have a tobacco licence already,” Giesbrecht explained.
Council has taken a hard stance against so-called “bong shops” in the community over the last six months. The former owner of Blitz 420, who wanted to open a bong shop in Akinsdale, openly accused the mayor of interfering with his business. Late last year, the owner of the retail chain The Chad 420 Smoke Shop appeared before council to explain his business practices, but was instead presented with an outstanding warrant for his arrest on drug trafficking charges.
