The latest effort to allow Washington State adults to grow cannabis at home fell short last week, pulled from consideration ahead of a planned committee vote on the final day before a key legislative deadline. The move means that, for at least another year, cultivating plants for personal use will likely remain a felony.
Nearly every other U.S. state to have legalized marijuana for adults allows some form of home cultivation, and most advocates nationwide now embrace home cultivation as a key part of cannabis reform. Yet Washington politicians have repeatedly rejected efforts to adopt policies on par with other legal-cannabis states.
Since voters approved one of the nation’s first marijuana legalization ballot measures in 2012, state lawmakers have introduced nearly a half-dozen bills to allow adults to grow plants for personal use, all to no avail. The first push happened just months after the launch of legal commercial sales, with then-Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles’s (D) sponsorship of SB 6083 in 2015. Subsequent homegrow bills were introduced by others in 2017, 2019, 2021 and this year.
While some of those bills were revived the year following their introduction, during the state’s shorter, even-year legislative sessions, each has stagnated and ultimately expired.
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