If you’re renting an apartment and wondering if you’ll be able to smoke marijuana at home, once recreational use becomes legal, it’s a good idea to raise it with your landlord.
The same goes if you’re in a multi-unit complex and want to see the building kept weed-free.
The Telegram reported last week about the regulations still to come in allowing people to grow cannabis plants at home in Newfoundland and Labrador, but the information was focused on homeowners growing plants on the properties they own.
Rental units are a different beast, subject to contracts where restrictions can be imposed by property owners.
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According to responses from government ministers during debate in the legislature on the province’s new cannabis legislation, landlords will be able to write “no recreational cannabis” — no smoking, no keeping cannabis plants — into new contracts, in the same way no-smoking clauses currently exist.
Fixed-term rental agreements in the province are limited to a maximum of one year, prompting opportunities for review of rental terms, as you re-establish the contract.
Whether a fixed-term or periodic agreement, a contract can be changed with consent of the tenant. If you’re already not interested in growing cannabis plants, it’s not likely to be a problem if your landlord wants to write into your contract that you can’t have them on the property.
On the other hand, the terms of a rental can be changed unilaterally by the landlord when an agreement is up for renewal, with proper notice given to the tenant.
In a fixed-term rental, that means the landlord provides not less than three-months’ notice before the end of the rental period.
“If the tenant is not agreeable to the new terms of the rental agreement, the tenant has the three months’ notice to secure other accommodations,” a Service NL spokeswoman noted in response to questions from The Telegram.
If you’re renting on a monthly agreement, paying month by month, the landlord still has to provide notice of new terms coming for a rental. In that case, the notice is also due at least three months before the contract changes.
It won’t be legal to have cannabis plants or the recreational use of marijuana on any property until the federal government passes the legislation allowing it, and the legislation comes into effect. There is no set date at this point.
Under provincial law, once legal, adults 19 and over will be able to personally have up to four cannabis plants, to a maximum of four plants in the home.
(CORRECTION: This story was originally posted with the incorrect age for possession of cannabis once legalized. The correct age is 19. The Telegram regrets the error. Read Newfoundland and Labrador’s new Act Respecting the Control and Sale of Cannabis.)
