It’s time to bring home grow to Washington

At the core of the debate about cannabis legalization, the place where the moralistic framework of prohibition runs smack up against the first principles of personal liberty, sits home grow.

Does the government have the right to criminalize citizens for growing a plant on their private property for their personal use?   

Clearly, the government has an interest in ensuring that commercial operations are properly licensed. But what right do they have to tell citizens what plants they can grow on their own property and use personally?   

This question will be front and center this coming Monday in Olympia, Washington, as a bill (SB 6204) to legalize home grow in the state will be debated by the Senate Committee on Labor & Commerce.

Washington is one of just four adult-use states that still criminalizes home grow. And as one of the two original states (along with Colorado) to legalize possession and adult-use sales, the ongoing criminalization of home grow in the state is all but incomprehensible.

If your state’s version of “ending prohibition” means that you can possess cannabis, but only if you buy it from a commercial operation, have you really ended prohibition for your citizens, or have you simply created a corporate exemption? 

We can argue all day about the whens and wheres and hows of commercial regulation of cannabis, but ending prohibition, at its center, is about restoring personal freedom, reducing destructive government overreach, and recognizing the rights of citizens to pursue life, liberty, and happiness however they choose to define that, so long as they are not harming others. 

Criminalizing people for growing a plant for their personal use, much less a plant that humans have used safely - medically, spiritually, and for personal enjoyment - for thousands of years, is anathema to those founding principles.

Adam J. Smith
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project

If you live in Washington, please consider submitting testimony in time for Monday’s hearing, sign in “PRO” using this tool from our friends at The Cannabis Alliance, or call the members of the Senate Committee on Labor & Commerce to let them know that home grow is a personal choice, and the government has no rightful interest or constitutional legitimacy in banning.