Concerns answered

Five-patient cap. Written designation filed with the Department. No advertising. No sales. Single cultivation site. No holding any other cannabis license. Cost reimbursement only, with records retained two years and produced on request. Annual reporting to the General Law Committee.

Plant allowances derive per patient, so every plant traces to a named, registered patient who filed a written designation. Total canopy capped at 500 square feet. Graduated civil penalties escalating to revocation.

Connecticut law already requires that any seedling sold to a home grower be tested for pesticides and heavy metals under § 21a-420p(f)(2)(B)(iii). The problem is that the legal channel is so narrow that most home growers cannot use it and buy untested genetics from out-of-state seed banks instead. The bill widens that channel. It also creates subsidized voluntary laboratory testing and requires a no-cost education module as a condition of licensure.

The same education module, required for licensure. Patients have been permitted to cultivate at home since 2021 and the Department has not proposed repealing that authority on this basis.

Correct, and the bill requests no such authority. Enforcement runs through the license and the written designation, with hearings under the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act. The bill states expressly that nothing in it authorizes entry into a dwelling or its curtilage without a warrant issued on probable cause or a resident's voluntary written consent.

A fair objection to the 2025 bill's laboratory fee cap. That cap is gone. It is replaced with a subsidy funded from license fees under § 5 of the bill — the same patient outcome by a different mechanism, and one that supports the state's laboratories rather than constraining them.

The fee schedule exists to answer this. Connecticut currently collects nothing from caregiver registration. The bill creates a fee-supported license with six annual tiers from $240 to $1,500. Half of each fee goes to the Department for administration, capped at its documented cost; half goes to the Connecticut Compassionate Care Fund. No portion of any fee may be used for enforcement.

Adult-use plant counts do not change. For registered qualifying patients the bill raises the limit to six mature and twelve immature plants, with a twenty-four-plant household cap among qualifying patients. Adults have been permitted to grow since July 2023 and registered patients since October 2021. The bill addresses where a lawful plant may stand and who may help a patient who cannot grow for themselves.

Outdoor cultivation must be inside an enclosure at least six feet high — a fence, wall, hedge, accessory structure or greenhouse — secured by a lock. Odor mitigation is required. Municipal fence, setback and accessory structure ordinances are preserved.

The enclosure must be secured by a lock against entry by anyone other than a resident of the primary residence, the patient’s caregiver or the patient’s cultivating caregiver.

The Department can move patient plants outdoors under existing authority at § 21a-408m(b)(4). It cannot create a license type, set fees, grant testing immunity, change who may sell seedlings, or change plant counts. Those all require legislation.

A final order of the Acting Attorney General, signed April 22 and effective April 28, 2026, placed two categories in Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act: drug products containing marijuana approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and marijuana subject to a state-issued license to manufacture, distribute or dispense it. Schedule III is the classification for substances with accepted medical use. 91 FR 22714 (Apr. 28, 2026); AG Order No. 6754-2026; issued under Executive Order 14370 via 21 U.S.C. § 811(d)(1). Adult-use cannabis remains Schedule I and this bill does not address it. Schedule III does not make Connecticut's program federally compliant, and the order is under challenge in the D.C. Circuit. Note that the order attaches to a state license — which is why this bill creates a cultivating caregiver license rather than a registration.