Water pipes and other smoking implements are now banned from city properties, including parks and beaches. The move is an addition to the recent expansion of the city's Smoke-Free Ottawa bylaw, which bans cigarette smoking on city property. The increasing popularity of water pipes, also known as hookahs or shisha, led the city's health board and council to direct Ottawa Public Health to draft a way to ban the devices on public sites.
While the tobacco ban applies to restaurant and bar patios, the non-tobacco smoking ban does not extend to businesses that offer hookah smoking on their patios. Although shisha can contain tobacco, for the most part it is composed of herbal substances. Still, the smoke from the heated material can irritate the eyes, noses and throats of passersby, according to a public health report. Council passed the bylaw on June 27.
It means that carrying any "lighted cigar, cigarette, pipe, or any other lighted or heated smoking equipment used to smoke any tobacco or non-tobacco substance" is not allowed on city-owned properties. That means the ban also includes drugs such as marijuana. The city report identifies two grounds under which the new bylaw could be contested in court: someone could claim that water-pipe use should be allowed for cultural reasons (it's a popular pastime in the Middle East) and medical marijuana users could argue that it violates their rights under the Federal Marihuana Medical Access Regulations, part of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.
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