Jamestown officials plan to update the city’s smoking ordinance to specifically include prohibitions on cannabis smoking in city parks.

The city’s current smoking ordinance on city-owned property prohibits use of tobacco products on sporting fields, the city Riverwalk, swimming pools, playgrounds, picnic facilities, parking lots and lawn areas. Section 193-16 of the city code also states smoking or using tobacco products only includes burning a lighted cigar, cigarette or pipe, or using other substances with tobacco. It does include electronic cigarettes, vapor devices and chewing tobacco. The current ordinance also includes any city buildings and parking facilities.

Council members could vote on the proposal as early as this month.

“I think pretty much the only difference is you can see where cannabis is added and some other verbiage at the request of corporation counsel to try to eliminate future changes,” said Mayor Kim Ecklund during Monday’s council work session. “(It states) either combustible or electronic in the future. That will leave us open to cover those things going forward. There aren’t many other changes other than that.”

There have been several bills introduced in the state Legislature over the past few years to deal with cannabis use in public places, but none have progressed to a floor vote in either the Assembly or Senate. State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, also lobbied former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to include prohibitions on use of cannabis in public spaces before the state legalized recreational marijuana. He called for recreational marijuana to be controlled much the way alcohol is with its own “open container” law.

Last year Borrello introduced S.7604 to prohibit public marijuana use, although cities and towns would be able to enact ordinances regarding whether and where marijuana could be publicly consumed. Borrello said his bill is a departure from current state law, which authorizes public marijuana use anywhere tobacco smoking is permitted. The measure would also establish a $125 fine for violations of the law. Current violations of the public consumption provisions of the law are subject to a $25 fine.

“It is important to emphasize that nearly all of the states that have legalized recreational marijuana have limited its usage to private property – one’s home or another private residence or a licensed, designated consumption establishment. That is the more responsible policy,” Borrello said. “However, in recent years, when given a choice between ‘responsible’ or ‘reckless’, New York leaders have typically chosen the latter, as they did with the recreational marijuana law.”