So you’ve applied for your ACMPR license and you’re patiently awaiting approval from Health Canada so that you can start growing medical marijuana from home. Maybe you’ve even used the Health Canada calculator to determine your official plant count for growing weed at home. Well, hold your horses, because there are a few things you should know about the ACMPR license to grow before you actually start growing.
An Original Medical Document is Required
If you’ve already sent in your ACMPR application for approval by Health Canada, hopefully, you already know that a medical document is required. Without an official and original prescription from a licensed healthcare practitioner in Canada, you won’t be allowed to grow at home for medical purposes. The main thing to remember here is that the document must be the original.
So you won’t be able to make a copy of the medical marijuana prescription and still receive approval. The government sector that hands out these licenses needs to see that you’ve been officially granted permission from a doctor to use marijuana for medical purposes. The prescription size (e.g. 7 grams per day, 30 grams per day, etc.) directly correlates to the number of plants you’ll be allowed to grow, so there’s no chance of receiving your license without the official medical doc.
There is No Longer a Storage Limit for Medical Growers
In the past, Health Canada put a restriction on the amount of cannabis a home grower could keep in storage. Recently, within the past year or so, Health Canada decided to get rid of this limit altogether. Although you still need to stick to your designated plant count limit, you can keep an infinite amount of cannabis in storage as long as you have the ACMPR license.
This is actually one of the biggest perks of applying for the license. Even though cannabis is officially legal for recreational purposes as well, if you’re purchasing or growing recreational weed, there is indeed a limit to the amount you can keep at home. On top of that, the amount you can have on your person in public is much lower for recreational cannabis users than it is for ACMPR license holders.
You Cannot Grow Indoors and Outdoors Simultaneously
There is a lot of confusion about indoor vs outdoor growing among the ACMPR community. Even though you’re allowed to apply for a license that grants permission for both indoor and outdoor growing, you can’t possess indoor and outdoor plants at the same time. So if you have a license that allows for both, make sure you abide by this rule!
If you are caught with both indoor and outdoor plants, all of your plants will be confiscated; it doesn’t matter if you’ve remained in your plant count limit, it is against ACMPR regulations to grow in both locations. Feel free to grow outdoors all throughout the spring and summer months, but as soon as you switch to indoor growing, all those outdoor plants must be harvested and put in storage.
