Stay Vigilant: Many in “Big Weed” Against Home Grow

Photo: Legal 3 Plant Outdoor Home Grow in California

Stay vigilant folks and make no mistake - just as many cannabis industry organizations and companies support home growing of cannabis, there’s a big, powerful and woefully misguided opposition to home grow!

As recently as 2018 a slew of corporate leaders, via the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association (NYMCIA), lobbied New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on the dangers and fallacies of home grown cannabis.

Originally reported on by Politico, Marijuana Moment and then others this lobbying effort shows what we are up against from inside the legal cannabis community. Below you will find access to the original communications, obtained via Freedom of Information Act Requests

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Access Document (Via Scribd)

Policy Statement November 28, 2018

From the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association (“Association”)

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The Fallacy of Home Grow (p13)

In listening sessions across New York State, some stakeholders have been arguing to permit home grown marijuana in New York. Understandably, the request is nearly always in response to the currently high prices of medical marijuana products or individual civil liberty. However, “home grow” creates a significant public safety and black market risk:

1. Home grow will make it impossible for the state to eliminate the black market.

2. Home grow will make it impossible for law enforcement to distinguish between legal and illegal products, thus frustrating enforcement efforts.

3. Home grow will undermine the state’s harm reduction goal of ensuring that cannabis sold in New York State is grown without noxious pesticides or other contaminants.

4. Home grow will undermine the state’s public health interest in ensuring that cannabis sold in New York State is tested, packaged, and and labeled correctly.

5. Home grow will cost the state tax revenue, thus hindering the state’s ability to fund priorities such as drug abuse treatment and community investment.

Our experience in other states strongly points to a better way. Increased competition and economies of scale will bring down the cost of marijuana products to the consumer as the medical and adult-use industries grow. Maine and Oregon have experienced plummeting prices that have institutionalized black market activity and contributed to the challenges of the industry in those states.

Further, home grow in other states has resulted in run-away black market and oversupply, all while leaving law enforcement with little or no way to inspect or control home grows without accessing the search warrant mechanism of the criminal justice system.

Notably, most would-be home growers lack the skill, knowledge and resources to ensure home grows are safe, unadulterated, and secure. Novice cultivators may not recognize dangerous fungi or appreciate the harms associated with using toxic pesticides to combat pests.

Home grown cannabis is a vector for untested, unregulated products to flow into and support the black market. A good home grower can grow up to 15-20 lbs. of cannabis each year from a single plant. New York State has gone to great lengths to ensure only clean, tested, properly-packaged and labeled, medicinal-quality cannabis is sold in the marketplace. Allowing untested, unlabeled, improperly-packaged cannabis to be grown in the state runs directly contrary to New York’s public policy goals.

We recommend that, like the surrounding jurisdictions of New Jersey, Massachusetts and Canada, home grow be prohibited in New York State.