Guam lets medical patients apply to grow cannabis at home

Guam gave qualified medical patients and their designated caregivers a permit route to grow cannabis at home on 9 October 2018. A $15 annual permit allowed up to six flowering plants and twelve juvenile plants while no medical dispensary was operating. The change offered a source of supply to people still waiting after the 2014 referendum.

Patients were waiting for the promised supply

Senator Louise Muña proposed the home-growing law. At its signing, governor Eddie Calvo said that getting medicinal cannabis to people who needed it had been a struggle, and described growing at home as another option.

Lieutenant governor Ray Tenorio called the change an interim solution and linked the delay to a lack of legislative funding. Muña pointed to people seeking help with pain, nausea and appetite.

The law made the absence of an operational medical dispensary the condition for issuing home-cultivation permits. It required medical certification and an application to the health department.

A permit came with plant and security limits

Patients and designated caregivers could hold six flowering mature plants and twelve juvenile plants. A caregiver serving several patients had a per-patient allowance, with additional commercial requirements when serving more than three patients.

Growing had to take place indoors, hidden from public view, in a room with a lockable door. Harvested cannabis had to be secured so only the patient or designated caregiver could reach it. Shared areas in apartment complexes were excluded.

A patient could grow at their residence, a caregiver’s residence or another site they or their caregiver owned or possessed. A landlord or homeowners’ association could prohibit cultivation. The health department could inspect the growing area after giving twenty-four hours’ notice and revoke a permit for non-compliance.

December brought express protections for growers

A December amendment extended the medical law’s protections to the new home-growing route. Compliant patients and caregivers were protected against arrest and prosecution, with safeguards for their property.

The amendment also clarified that the plant allowance was counted separately from the patient’s allowable cannabis amount. It protected custody and visitation rights for permitted conduct, while preserving intervention where a child was endangered.

Adult use followed with a different allowance

The following April, Guam legalised adult use. People aged twenty-one and over could grow six plants per residence, with no more than three flowering, in an enclosed and locked area.

That law expressly preserved the medical legislation. For Guam, the two routes therefore carried different conditions: medical certification and a permit for the patient scheme, and a smaller flowering-plant allowance under the general adult-use rules.^[1][2][3][4]