Thanks to newly elected Prime Minister Trudeau, Canada will very soon legalize marijuana.

And what might this have to do with Toronto comedy? Well, for one thing, they won’t be arrested if they spark up outside their favourite club. Comics generally like pot. It’s use is rampant and almost universal in the community. A lot of them feel there’s a link between its use and creativity. Well, at the very least, it does make you giggle.

But not many people know that there are small comedy rooms that have been operating in the city where the audience openly smokes weed and have comedy nights where a stoned comic can perform for a jury of their peers.

There’s the Underground Café on Toronto’s east side, Vape on the Lake out in Etobicoke, Vapor Central in the city core and a number of others all operating intermittently or nightly. They don’t advertise, of course, it’s all word of mouth or social media.

The audience brazenly smokes up before or during the show, which is illegal, but the powers that be have shown tolerance, another sign that the city is growing up.  But there is no dealing, buying, selling or any financial transaction whatsoever. And there is no alcohol available.

In this sense, the original Yuk Yuk’s was a kind of pot room back in 1978. We couldn’t get a liquor licence for two years, so pretty much everyone came  ripped. The menu reflected the (high) times: Alpha-Bits and milk, anatomically correct gingerbread men (and women) and our signature junk food platter. One night, comic Chas Lawther smoked a joint onstage in front of a packed house and the reaction was incendiary. 

It was around this time that Cheech and Chong were at the height of their fame, and George Carlin released his groundbreaking album FM&AM, with one side designed to be listened to straight and the other side stoned.

One Toronto comic who now is at the centre of the weed Zeitgeist is Mike Rita. Born to Portuguese immigrants, Rita is open about his love of bud. He has a wonderful routine about trying to get his mom, ailing from cancer treatments, to try the weedy analgesic, but of course she won’t budge. The piece is hilarious and touching.

Rita loves performing at the pot cafés. “About 98 per cent of the audience is high,” he says. “I’d say 50 per cent of my material is about pot, but in regular clubs it’s only 20 per cent.”

In Colorado, Alaska and Washington state, places in the United States that have legalized marijuana, public use of pot is illegal. Their similar clean air initiatives make pot-friendly performance spaces difficult.

Ironically, our liberal attitudes toward legalization might affect these pot comedy rooms negatively, with bylaws enacted to ban them. Or perhaps the pot lobby will be able to establish them as private membership clubs to get around that kind of legislation.

There are going to be lots of roadblocks on the way to legalization. These clubs may not last forever, and my advice is to visit them now. It will be a lot more convenient than a future ticket to Amsterdam.