A Florida bill to allow the limited home cultivation of medical marijuana highlights a controversial aspect of the legalization era: in many jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis, it is still illegal for adults to grow their own weed at home.

Florida Republican state Sen. Joe Gruters filed the bill to legalize limited home cultivation of medical cannabis earlier this month. Under SB 546, registered medical marijuana patients aged 21 and older would be allowed to obtain a certificate from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services permitting them to grow up to two cannabis plants at home for personal use.

“People want to have the ability to grow it themselves,” Gruters said, according to a report from Florida Politics. “If you have an ID card, why should we not allow that? It’s probably a good idea. We can still make it regulated and limit the amount.”

But cannabis policy reform advocates say that the bill is too restrictive because it limits home cultivation to two plants per household, regardless of the number of patients who live there.

“Two plants for multiple patients? The math is not mathing,” Chris Cano, executive director of the Suncoast Chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), told the Florida Phoenix.

“Elected officials need to address the chronic debilitating conditions of medical cannabis patients in a serious manner,” Cano added. “Clearly, the good senator is no expert on the needs of a truly sick patient or the amount of cannabis one needs to consume when suffering.

While acknowledging that “any legislative conversation about home growing in Florida is a welcome development,” long-time cannabis activist Steve DeAngelo says that “SB 546 as currently drafted needs more work.”

An accomplished home and commercial grower, DeAngelo was recently named global ambassador of Blimburn Seeds, a Barcelona-based company that supplies cannabis seeds to gardeners in the U.S. With the experience of talking to thousands of cannabis patients and growing an untold number of plants over the years, he says that Florida’s bill is simply not a viable option for most patients.

“The two-plant limit ignores both patient needs and agricultural realities. Inevitably, no matter the skill of the gardener, some plants fail– and the yield from a two-plant harvest is unlikely to be sufficient to last most patients the twelve weeks it will take to grow their next crop,” DeAngelo says in a virtual interview. “And what about elderly couples (or others) who both need cannabis? Their allotted amount of cannabis would be cut in half, just because they live in the same residence.”

Consumers Want To Grow Their Own Weed

Public opinion research shows strong support for legalizing home cultivation among cannabis consumers. A survey conducted by The Harris Poll last year on behalf of Barcelona-based Royal Queen Seeds found that 81% of cannabis consumers agree all Americans should have the right to grow marijuana at home. Just over a quarter (26%) of cannabis consumers said that they had grown cannabis at home, while a fifth (21%) of those who haven’t grown at home said they would like to try.

The survey revealed different reasons that consumers choose to grow their own cannabis, including a third (34%) of home cultivators who said they feel safer consuming homegrown marijuana over commercially available products. Nearly half said growing their own weed gives them a sense of confidence (49%), joy (48%) or pride (46%), or that they do so simply because it is fun (47%). Nearly as many said home growing is more cost-effective than purchasing at dispensaries (43%), while 39% said the quality of the cannabis flower they grow at home is better than store-bought weed.

Opponents of legalizing home cannabis cultivation argue that allowing citizens to grow weed will help fuel the underground cannabis market that persists despite the legalization of regulated sales. Others believe allowing personal cultivation poses a threat to children who may be able to gain access to home gardens.

DeAngelo, however, says that cannabis cultivation should have never been outlawed in the first place.

“The right to grow is a natural right. And when I talk about natural rights, I’m talking about the kinds of things that Thomas Jefferson talked about in the Declaration of Independence,” he says. “That we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. Natural rights pre-existed any government, and any good government, any decent government, is created to protect those natural rights. Mother nature gave us the right to grow cannabis and nobody, no government, no person, no corporation, has the right to take that away from us.”

But in nearly half of the states with legal marijuana, medical cannabis patients do not have the option of growing their medicine at home.

“Out of 38 states that have legalized cannabis for medical or adult-use purposes, 17 of them entirely prohibit home growing,” DeAngelo says. “And this includes places like Illinois and New Jersey and Florida, where massive amounts of cannabis are being grown by large businesses, in Florida in particular. And yet, home growers are subject to ridiculous penalties.”

“Whatever you do in the privacy of your own home is your own business,” he continues. “And if there’s evidence that people are putting cannabis into the stream of commerce without appropriate licensure, then that is a civil matter, and they should be civilly sanctioned for doing business without an appropriate license. But nobody should ever be prosecuted criminally for growing cannabis in their own home.”