Edmonton to Regulate New Local Sex Doll Rental Business

About a week after Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, saw the first sex doll rental establishment open in the city, officials in the city of about 900,000 people say they have just now figured out how to regulate the new and seemingly unusual form of business—and according to a city spokesperson, that means very little regulation at all, reported The Edmonton Journal newspaper on Friday.  The new business, Doll Next Door, is run “by a married couple who aims to deliver a little spunk to the entertainment industry,” according to the business’s own literature as quote by The Toronto Star. The dolls—which are “100 percent sterilized after every use by professional cleaners using specialized equipment,” the site says—rent for $199 (plus a refundable $500 deposit) for two hours, or $240 for an overnight sex doll romp. If the rental service operates only out of a home with no storefront, the sex doll rental business would require only a general business license, and otherwise would not be subject to zoning regulations or any other permit process in Edmonton at all, spokesperson Karen Burgess told the Journal. But if the business decided to expand into a storefront retail operation—a sex doll brothel, for example, as the owners of Doll Next Door say they are currently planning—the regulations would be more strict, Burgess said. At the same time, because dolls are not actual people, a sex doll brothel would still be more lightly regulated than a massage business. “Because a sex doll brothel would involve people engaging with dolls and not humans, it would be permitted differently than something like a body rub center,” the city spokesperson told the newspaper. But while the zoning and permit regulations governing the Edmonton sex doll rental business now appear clear, health regulations are still a bit fuzzy. “Given the relative infancy of this type of business, there are no requirements for Alberta Health Services regulation of a businesses of this nature, either for approval to open or on a routine basis,” Dr. Kathryn Koliaska, an AHS medical officer told the Journal. “We are always here to help operators who have questions and want to work collaboratively to create a safe environment.” The AHS did, however “recommend rigorous cleaning of doll bodies and the replacement of intimate contact surfaces for each user rather than condoms for enhanced safety reasons.”  With proper cleaning and replacement of each doll’s “intimate contact surfaces” after every use, “risk should be low for contracting a sexually transmitted infections,” Koliaska said. Photo by Wikimedia Commons