New York permits recreational cannabis but bans home cultivation entirely. Attorney Michelle Fields argues the policy harms low-income medical patients most.
New York allows adults to buy and use recreational cannabis, but it bans them from growing a single plant at home. Michelle Fields, a New York State cannabis attorney with more than 17 years of litigation experience, is publicly arguing that the ban is unjust and unnecessary. The residents hurt most, she says, are low-income people who depend on cannabis as medicine, not recreational consumers.
Fields made the case in a piece published in Whereitzat Media, pointing to a patchwork of state laws that New York has not followed. At the time of writing, 18 states and the District of Columbia allowed some form of home cultivation. Michigan permits any household to grow up to 12 plants for recreational use. Hawaii limits home growing to registered medical patients, who can cultivate up to 10 plants. New York, by contrast, had no allowance for home growing at all.
Fields argues that medical cannabis users are often living near or below the poverty line, and home cultivation is, in her words, “one method — a simple method — of lowering the cost of medical treatments for those who are often the least empowered.” She also argues that growing plants provides “serenity, dignity, and a small measure of self-reliance” as a form of therapy.
Beyond cost, Fields raises a supply diversity problem that commercial dispensaries cannot easily solve. Different cannabis varieties carry different medical properties. Specialty strains may not be reliably stocked in retail supply chains. A patient managing seizures might need a specific strain that isn’t available. Home cultivation, she argues, fills that gap. Restricted supply, she adds, also drives up prices across the board.
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Fields also makes a personal safety argument. Even for recreational users, she writes, sourcing cannabis can be “personally endangering.” That risk is higher for medical patients and caregivers, she argues, and was significantly compounded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when seeking out an illicit supply carried added physical danger.
On the question of social harm, Fields points to the experience of states that have already legalized home growing. According to her piece, there is no evidence that crime increased, that home growers fed illegal markets, or that driving-under-the-influence incidents spiked in those states. She writes that New York, a state she describes as frequently at the leading edge of social and political change, is running behind on this specific issue.
Fields focuses her practice on New York cannabis law and describes her work as oriented toward equity, equality, and inclusion.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily archive
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