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In my experience, being polite actually works pretty well. I would approach with something like:

Hey guys, please don't smoke that here, there are kids participating in the event as well.

Chances are they know they are doing something they shouldn't and would just stop.

I advise against being judgmental or bringing legality into the conversation to avoid conflict.

Of course if that doesn't help you can do what every low level employee should do when handling issues at their workplace - Call your manager.

You're right to say you have a problem.

It seems you understand your role, "creating the game to entertain people," to help everybody have fun.

If the police swoop in and arrest a lot of people for smoking weed, nobody will have fun. If families with children--or other people--have to leave your event or always be on the lookout, they won't have fun.

Your question doesn't mention whether you are expected to care for minors. So, I guess you are not; it's up to their parents to do that. If parents are giving their children into your care, that's a different situation entirely; ask another question.

It's not your job to enforce laws; you know that. You don't have the power to confiscate contraband. So don't use legality as your motivation for dealing with this problem. Instead think about having fun.

You can nudge people to avoid smoking weed by saying things like

"This is a family event. Please don't smoke weed inside the event."

or even

"Hey, be cool! Do that outside!"

You should consider getting your organization to adopt a code of conduct, and setting expectations before the next event.

I'm not there to play the police, yet I can't let people commit small (or not-so-small) crimes without doing anything, because the association might suffer from it.

This is exactly what you should say.

They will understand.

And if they don't understand (or pretend not to understand) and get nasty about it, you can ask them to leave your event just like you would any troublemaker. It is not likely to come to this if you are polite, persisent and persuasive.

You can apologize, you can be polite about it, but this is the real truth—if you condone their currently illegal acts, you place the entire event and the entire association at legal risk of being shut down by the police.

You can absolutely hold the line on this. Depending on your own personal stance, and how argumentative they are about this, you might add something like:

Look, I'm not here to judge, and I'm not here to play cop. I just need to keep this event safe, family friendly, and also keep it on a legal footing. Let's take care of it ourselves before some local resident complains and it turns into "no fun" for everybody. None of us wants that to happen.

Or you could approach it more casually:

Hey guys, I overheard you about your smoking choices—I've got no problem with that, but we really need to keep it clean here at the venue. It's a privately rented space and there's rental agreements and all that, so can you please hold off on that stuff until you get home?

(There's a difference between confronting someone currently smoking an illegal drug, and confronting someone who you merely heard talking and planning to smoke one later.)

I've recently learned about NonViolent Communication (NVC for short), which helped me since to express my concerns and feelings in really different matters.

It basically is about expressing what you feel and why, to non judgmentally and non violently reach a compromise.

I guess you could try something along the lines of

Hello. I have recently found out you are taking drugs during the event. While I generally do not have any issues with drugs, I am anxious, because I need that people that come to the event and their family are satisfied and feel safe. I also fear I will be held responsible for any mishap, and that I would not be able to come again in future events. Do you think you could not display or talk about your drug use in public?

While they may not agree, it will open up the conversation, without sounding judgmental.

I really suggest you learn a bit about NVC if you want to use that way of communicating your concerns.

IMHO The correct answer is to convince the organizers to Ban All Smoking at these events. The Cannabis Smoking problem is then solved.

1) There is no debate, the documentation is readily available and overwhelming, Second Hand Tobacco Smoke is Deadly. It inflicts serious harm on innocent by-standers. People (especially restaurant workers and non-smoking spouses) get emphysema and other horrible respiratory illnesses from prolonged exposure to second hand smoke.

2) The thing that most people fail to understand about second hand smoke is that it is not just the health dangers involved. You are also being subjected to their nicotine drug addiction. Your body is receiving the same nicotine drug (at lower levels) that they themselves are receiving. This ought to be a scandal, but smokers have dominated the conversation for so long that instead this fact gets ignored.

I can tell you from first hand experience, that when I am around tobacco smokers that I get a nicotine high from their smoke. And cigarette smoke also makes me extremely ill. I simply cannot attend a gathering where there is cigarette smoke. Thankfully where I live, it has been banned from most public places.

What smokers do to non-smokers is not much different than if a heroin addict ran around injecting everyone they could reach, with a heroin needle. The smoke is less confrontational than being stabbed with a needle, but it is just as insidious and much harder to avoid. Second hand nicotine is not as addictive as heroin. But the end result is very similar, people do get addicted to nicotine simply by being around cigarette smokers.

I don't think that anyone would question that second hand Cannabis smoke will get you high if there is enough of it in the air. So why does it never seem to cross people's minds that cigarette smoke has the same effect with the nicotine drug. And unlike Cannabis, rooms that are saturated with cigarette smoke are commonplace.

The bottom line is that when you are near someone who is smoking a cigarette, you end up smoking it too, whether or not you want to.

Suppose that due to some weird metabolic quirk, I developed a fondness for the smell of teargas. Sniffing it brought me extreme pleasure. So then I took some portable teargas with me and started spraying it wherever I go. And everybody else got to breath it. Do you think that people would put up with such nonsense for even 1 second? So why do people put up with cigarettes? Because I can tell you that the effect cigarette smoke has on me is not a whole lot different than being exposed to teargas, if anything it is worse. Now admittedly my condition is not that common, but even if you don't feel the effects of it, it is still making you sick.

Society (at least in the USA) goes to considerable measures to protect the small number of people who suffer from an allergy to peanuts, from being exposed. Why should the effort to protect people from cigarette smoke be any less? Especially since it has huge health consequences for a much greater number of people. Whereas peanut allergies are quite rare.

You can of course provide an isolated outdoor area for people to indulge in their drug habits (nicotine or whatever) without inflicting it on others. One way to discourage unwanted activities is to set up a camera to monitor the area with a sign that makes it clear that video surveillance is provided "for their protection". You don't even need a camera, just the sign should do it. Or you just look the other way and make sure you have sufficient disclaimers that your organization is not responsible for what people do when outside, where they are effectively off-site.

P.S. I am actually in favor of legalizing Cannabis, it has many health benefits, there is a great deal of evidence for this. Whereas cigarettes have zero health benefits and a mountain of evidence of it's health destructiveness.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, but the harm caused by cigarettes is huge and people's complacency is exasperating beyond measure. People should just not be smoking (anything) at public events, especially if there are children present. So how about rethinking the approach to your problem?

I suppose the key here is to let it be known that you want them to stop smoking cannabis at your events without making it seem like you have some sort of personal problem with it. If they sense you hope to escalate it to the point where law enforcement gets involved, they may not respond the way you had hoped. The police in situations like this should be a last resort in my opinion. If you make it clear to them that this event will be disrupted by police being called if they don't stop, or possibly cause the events to stop altogether, I would imagine they will stop or smoke somewhere else.

I think it's important to emphasize your concern with the quality of experience the event provides for everyone there, by doing so the offenders should understand that you are not doing this due to disagreeing with drug use but because it has the ability to affect others negatively. If you come off with any sort of personal prejudice against smoking cannabis, then you run the risk of them trying to "stick it to the man" and either simply relocate in the event the day of or come back later & do the same thing in a more creative manner.