Mayor Jim Watson wants Ottawa police to crack down on a new bring-your-own marijuana vapourizing lounge in Vanier.

While it's illegal to possess marijuana without a medical prescription, the manager at BuzzOn on Montreal Road said that everyone is welcome. The lounge opened over the weekend to those willing to pay a $5 cover fee to socialize with other marijuana users.

Watson said police should enforce the law.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said that marijuana is illegal and he wants police to enforce that law at a new marijuna vapourizing lounge. (CBC) "It's plain and simple. My perspective is, if there's illegal activity in that operation on Montreal Road, then the police should move in," Watson said Wednesday.

"It's somewhat unchartered waters, but my belief is that it's an illegal activity and the police should be taking appropriate action if illegal activity is taking place. And if they're smoking marijuana in a storefront, then that's illegal."

Police visited the lounge on Monday but left without laying any charges. Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau said earlier this week that officers will continue to monitor the lounge.

Lounge manager Wayne Robillard said that consuming marijuana is a "petty matter" compared to other problems that should take up police time in Ottawa.

"I have some sympathy for the police who are really stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's a shame they are being forced (Mayor Watson flipped the issue back to them) to waste valuable resources on such a petty matter," he wrote to CBC in an email Thursday.

No smoking or drug dealing in lounge

The rules at BuzzOn are no tobacco, alcohol or drug dealing.

The lounge gives marijuana users a place other than "street corners and parks, which would offend prohibitionists," Robillard said.

"In the end, we are simply providing a need for those who are suffering and seeking a place of comfort and understanding," he said.

Though it's the first in Ottawa, marijuana lounges exist in other Canadian cities, including Toronto, Halifax and Winnipeg.

Those who pay to get in are offered vapourizer machines, which heats the marijuana enough to release the THC, the active ingredient in the plant, without burning the stems and buds. Users inhale the THC coming out of the machine through a plastic bag.

Neither the province's Smoke Free Ontario Act nor the city's smoking bylaws cover marijuana.

The building that houses the lounge is zoned as a "place of assembly," and as such is not violating the city rules, said Jan Harder, chair of the city's planning committee.

BuzzOn is owned by a numbered company.