Vancouver’s last remaining hookah lounges have just four more weeks until the city has the option to shut them down forever.
The owners of Ahwaz Hookah House and the Persian Tea House were charged with violating a 2007 city health bylaw that banned indoor smoking in commercial establishments. Though the bylaw had an exemption for hookah and cigar lounges, city council removed it in 2008 and thus began a seven-year court battle.
In April, however, a B.C. Supreme Court judge dismissed the lounge owners’ appeal over the bylaw and when his reasons for judgment were filed Friday, a stay he’d issued allowing the lounges to remain open for 30 more days was put into effect.
In his reasons, Justice Peter Leask rejected a number of arguments put forwards by the appellants’ council. They included the contention that shisha in their hookah waterpipes wasn’t burning, the bylaw’s definition of smoking was too broad, the city was overstepping its power to protect public health and the bylaw violates their Charter Rights.
Hamid Mohammadian, owner of the Persian Tea House, said he would fight the decision, despite mounting legal fees and all signs pointing to the end of his beloved Davie Street lounge.
The downtrodden father of five said that after 17 years of unwavering support from his customers, he doesn’t intend to shut them out.
“I’m looking to God and if one day I have to go, I go to talk to mayor myself,” Mohammadian said.
“They close me, I am open, because this is my life. I am 68. What can I do? What kind of job?”
In an act of protest, he began a 23-day hunger strike before the appeal hearing in April. Over the next four weeks, he hopes customers will come to show their support and give him the chance to thank them for their patronage.
Mohammadian said he’s perplexed the city lets dispensaries sell medicinal marijuana down the street while coming after him for letting them smoke herbal shisha indoors.
He’ll considering switching to electronic vaporizers in the lounge, he said, but he’s wary of getting caught in yet another legal battle after the city amended the bylaw last fall to ban those, too.
Dean Davison, the lawyer who has represented Mohammadian and the owner of Ahwaz Hookah House since 2008 said he’ll meet with his clients this week to discuss their options, including taking their appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
“Generally, I think fighting for smoking is always an uphill battle and I think it’s difficult for judges and politicians alike to look at it reasonably and in some cases just legally,” he said.
Davison said he finds it “a bit mind-boggling” that people smoke pot in vapour lounges yet the city chose to crack down on his clients.
“However, it is, in the law, a choice the city can make,” he said. “The law says just because you don’t enforce all of the bylaw doesn’t mean you can’t enforce some of it.”
