Criminal Justice
The criminal treatment of cannabis
A 2027 proposal for the Connecticut General Assembly, separate from and independent of the Cultivating Caregiver Act.
One kilogram. Five years. No suspension.
Connecticut legalized cannabis in 2021. Selling eight ounces of it is a six-month misdemeanor. Selling two and a quarter pounds carries a five-year mandatory minimum.
The cliff
Section 21a‑278b covers unlicensed sale of cannabis. It is flat. A class B misdemeanor for a first offense, a class A misdemeanor for any subsequent offense, with no quantity tiers and no felony anywhere in the section. Below eight ounces, subsection (c) reduces it to a five-hundred-dollar fine.
Section 21a‑278 reaches the same conduct at one kilogram or more. Subsection (b)(2) sets the term at not less than five years and not more than twenty, and provides that the mandatory minimum portion may not be suspended except in narrow circumstances.
One kilogram is about two and two-tenths pounds. An ounce under it is six months. An ounce over it is five years.
The drug factory
Section 21a‑267 no longer penalizes cannabis paraphernalia. Its title now reads “associated with a controlled substance other than cannabis.”
Subdivision (1) of subsection (b) of section 21a‑277 also excludes cannabis. Subsection (c) of the same section does not.
Subsection (c) makes it a crime to possess drug paraphernalia in a drug factory situation. Subparagraph (B) of subdivision (20) of section 21a‑240 defines a factory as any building, rooms or location containing equipment or paraphernalia used for growing, harvesting, packaging, storing or containing a controlled substance. Subparagraph (A) lists the equipment. Cannabis is a controlled substance in Connecticut, classified in schedule II.
The penalty that is not in the section
Section 21a‑277 states a penalty for subsections (a) and (b). It states none for subsection (c).
Subsection (c) of section 21a‑255 supplies the penalty for any violation of sections 21a‑243 to 21a‑282 for which none is expressly provided: up to two years and a thirty-five-hundred-dollar fine for a first offense, and a class C felony for any subsequent offense.
What the bill does
It removes cannabis from the drug factory offense while leaving that offense fully available for every other controlled substance. It deletes the cannabis clause from the mandatory minimum in section 21a‑278. It bars the adjacent enhancement statute from restoring what the deletion removes. It replaces the flat penalty structure for unlicensed sale with graduated classifications. It creates a five-step ladder for cultivation above the authorized limit, starting with a civil penalty and topping out at a class A misdemeanor with no felony at any plant count. And it provides that incarceration is available only where one of six defined aggravating circumstances has been alleged in a separate part of the information and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
This bill is not a reduction across the board.
It removes a mandatory minimum and removes cannabis from a prohibition-era offense. It also replaces the flat misdemeanor structure in section 21a‑278b with graduated classifications, which means conduct above ten pounds becomes a felony where today it is a misdemeanor. That is a deliberate choice: graduated felony classification carrying no mandatory minimum, in place of a five-year mandatory minimum triggered by weight alone. We would rather you read that here than find it in section 5.
A separate proposal from the Cultivating Caregiver Act.
That bill amends Connecticut’s medical cannabis chapter and applies only to registered patients and their caregivers. This one amends the criminal statutes and applies to everyone. They go to different committees, they amend no statute in common, and neither depends on the other. Support for one should not be read as support for the other.
The documents
- The billComplete text, ten sections, with a research annotation and the 2026 session check.
- Bill summaryTwo pages: existing law, what changes, what stays illegal, what the bill does not do.
- Bill analysisSection-by-section, in the format the Office of Legislative Research uses. Simulated, not an official OLR document.
- Fiscal noteAgency-by-agency. Simulated, not an official OFA document.