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The growth of Arkansas’s medical marijuana program has been on the rise, with sales reaching momentous highs and products becoming widely available. For the last two years, it has been a solid uptrend.
The new legislative session is incoming, and Arkansas will be looking at medical marijuana with new targets and goals in mind. The conversation of legalization will likely be a hot topic this year.
One part of legalization and medical marijuana programs that hasn’t been addressed yet in Arkansas is growing cannabis from your own home.
Currently, it remains illegal to cultivate cannabis at home, even for patients who have been approved a medical marijuana card. In this article, we’ll cover the pros and cons of allowing patients to garden their own cannabis.
Cultivating Cannabis at Home in Arkansas
Arkansas Marijuana Sales Reach New Highs, Patients Foot the Bill
Arkansas legalized medical marijuana in 2016, and the first dispensary opened in May of 2019.
Since then, the state has made waves and moved product, recording an impressive $264.9 million in sales in 2021 alone.
While the program and its benefactors have been reaping the sweet rewards of marijuana tax revenue, patients have seen relatively high prices.
This brings up the question of whether or not patients should be able to grow their own medicine and how they can do so safely, given the state is generating hundreds of millions of dollars from medical marijuana patients.
Growing Your Medicine at Home Safely and Affordably
If the main concern over at-home legalization were simply that it could affect the state’s revenue, we’d likely be able to grow cannabis at home right now.
Unfortunately, it’s a more complicated than that.
While growing cannabis can be a safe and easy practice for home-based enthusiasts, it raises concerns for communities and neighborhoods.
Most people would agree that patients should be able to cultivate their own medicine, and they’d probably also agree that the medicine shouldn’t be accessible to anyone besides the patients. Unfortunately, that’s a little difficult to accomplish with cannabis.
In order to keep your cannabis from being stolen, which happens more often than you’d think, you need a very secure building to grow in or a private farm that is inaccessible to people.
Growing Your Own Cannabis in Arkansas Has Pros and Cons
Aside from the obvious need to keep your crops safe, the state would likely want to keep home-growers from producing extraordinarily large quantities of cannabis to distribute or sell out of state.
Among the cannabis priorities for Arkansas legislators and citizens alike, communities very close to schools would likely need to be annexed in some capacity to prevent children from accessing crops.
And though these problems are probably manageable, they are complex and exemplify how difficult it can be for lawmakers to achieve effective and equitable results.
If at-home cannabis cultivation were instantly legalized without any limits on volume, safety standards, or security protocols, patients would be left to figure out the appropriate ways to grow cannabis.
While this might be beneficial for aficionados, it doesn’t clearly explain to every-day patients how to cultivate cannabis in a health and security-conscious way.
Why Arkansas Should Legalize Growing Cannabis at Home
The Benefits of Growing Cannabis at Home Likely Outweigh the Cons
At the end of the day, patients looking to treat their symptoms with medical cannabis fall into a relatively small niche.
And although getting and renewing a medical marijuana card in Arkansas is a straightforward and easy process, you still need to be diagnosed with a qualifying condition to access medical cannabis.
Recreational at-home cultivation might consist of a broader range of individuals, but medical marijuana patients are looking for affordable relief as their top priority; at-home cultivation is an important step in that process.
Cultivating cannabis at home offers an extraordinary number of benefits for medical marijuana patients, and in truth, it is a relatively affordable process compared to the retail cost of cannabis.
The benefits of being able to curate and grow specific strains of cannabis to treat specific conditions is critical in efficiently using cannabis as a medicine.
How Arkansas Could Approach at Home Cannabis Cultivation
Depending on the legalization efforts that could pass in Arkansas this year, at home cannabis cultivation could become a reality in the Natural State.
The Arkansas True Grass amendment offers at home cannabis cultivation, alongside other things like marijuana offense expungement and additional state tax revenues.
Arkansas could offer home cultivation to medical patients, while keeping recreational cannabis restricted to dispensaries only. When a recreational program passes, this would help the problem of inventory. Medical marijuana patients could access more affordable cannabis in better targeted forms as an alternative to legalizing home growing altogether.
This would mitigate at-home cultivation to a much smaller pool of people, allowing for less bottlenecked regulation in figuring out how to manage the complexities of legalizing at-home cannabis cultivation.
Become an Arkansas Marijuana Patient
Arkansas is a comprehensive medical marijuana state, offering many different cannabis products for patients who have a medical marijuana certification. Arkansas recently approved telemedicine for medical marijuana card renewals, so you can renew your Arkansas medical marijuana card online from the comfort of your own home!
Qualifying Arkansas patients can schedule an appointment to renew their medical marijuana card with one of our certified physicians and continue using medical marijuana as an alternative treatment.
We’re dedicated to helping patients every step of the way, so feel free to give us a call at 844-249-8714, and we can answer your questions about getting medical marijuana in Arkansas.
Doctors Who Care. Relief You Can Trust.
Helping everyone achieve wellness safely and conveniently through increased access to medical marijuana. Our focus on education, inclusion, and acceptance will reduce stigma for our patients by providing equal access to timely information and compassionate care.
If you have any questions, call us at 844-249-8714, or simply book a medical marijuana evaluation to start getting relief you can trust today!
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