Philly lawmakers want to ‘clamp down’ on smoke shops. Their landlords could be next.

There’s a smoke shop in North Philly peddling recreational drugs across the street from a daycare. A West Philly storefront that sells loose cigarettes on a residential block. A convenience store in Spring Garden that advertises urine to people looking to pass a drug test.

These are among the so-called nuisance businesses that City Council members and neighborhood association leaders cited Monday as lawmakers advanced legislation to make it easier for the city to shut down stores that sell cannabis and tobacco products without licenses.

And legislators said their next target could be the landlords who rent space to those businesses.

“We have to work with our city departments and our state partners to clamp down on these businesses,” said City Council Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson, who represents the city at-large. “We’re just being inundated.”

Members of Council’s Committee on Licenses and Inspections passed two bills Monday that city officials say seek to close loopholes store owners exploit to avoid being cited for failing to obtain proper permits.

In introducing the legislation earlier this year, Gilmore Richardson cited an Inquirer report about Pennsylvania’s unregulated hemp stores, which sell products advertised as legal hemp that are often black market cannabis or contaminated with illicit toxins.

» READ MORE: City Council bill would crack down on unregulated smoke shops, citing Inquirer report

One bill makes it easier for the city to shut down nuisance businesses by removing language that classifies some violations as criminal matters, requiring that the police investigate them as crimes rather than civil violations that are quicker to adjudicate.

The second piece of legislation makes it illegal for businesses to essentially reorganize under a new name but conduct the same operations as a means of evading enforcement.

Both pieces of legislation could come up for a full vote in the Democratic-dominated City Council in the coming weeks. Members of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration testified in favor of them, meaning the mayor is likely to sign both.

Neighborhood association leaders also testified Monday in favor of the changes, but several said more aggressive enforcement is needed. They said smoke shops in particular have popped up throughout their commercial corridors, as have convenience stores that don’t even have licenses to operate as businesses, let alone sell recreational drugs.

“We’ve seen firsthand the selling of illegal drug paraphernalia and [loose cigarettes], many of which children walk past in order to get to the candy bars and seniors walk past to get to the milk,” said Heather Miller, of the Lawncrest Community Association. “We need to address this.”

Elaine Petrossian, a Democratic ward leader in Center City and a community activist, called for “much” higher fines and penalties for landlords. She cited progress the municipal government has made in New York City, where authorities cracked down on building owners who knowingly rented space to tenants selling cannabis or tobacco without licenses to do so.

Several lawmakers said they’d support a similar approach. Councilmember Mark Squilla, who represents a district that spans from South Philadelphia to Kensington, said landlords must be held “more accountable.”

“If they had some skin in the game, maybe they’d think twice about renting to an illegal operation,” he said.

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents parts of West Philadelphia, agreed. She said she recently attempted to meet with a building owner who rents space to a problematic smoke shop in her district, but was rebuffed.

“He was like, ‘These people pay me rent, and that’s the extent to which I basically care,’” Gauthier said. “We need something that forces property owners to be more accountable than that, because neighbors are suffering.”

Staff writers Max Marin and Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.