Imagine you take prescription medication to control persistent nausea. The medication is in capsule form, so you carry it with you wherever you go. It is perfectly legal to take that next dose even if you are in a public place. But what if your medication is medical cannabis? Can you consume it in public?
This seems like a simple enough question to answer. Unfortunately, the answer is anything but simple. One needs to consider state laws along with the various delivery methods patients have access to. The waters are pretty muddy except when it comes to vaping in dry heating medical cannabis.
Delivery Through Inhalation
The biggest challenges relating to consuming medical cannabis in public relate to inhalation. Whether a patient is smoking, vaping, or dry heating cannabis, the process produces airborne constituents that can be inhaled by passersby. That is a problem. Just like people don’t want to be subjected to secondhand smoke, they aren’t interested in being exposed to secondhand vapor produced through medical cannabis consumption.
Another thing to consider is perception. Smoking, vaping, and dry heating are nearly impossible to hide. Anyone in the general vicinity of a medical cannabis user could easily see and observe the person consuming. That creates a negative perception that state lawmakers want to avoid.
All of that being the case, most states prohibit smoking, vaping, and dry heating medical cannabis in public. Some states even prohibit these activities in private areas subject to public observation. Any use that could be construed as publicly observable is not allowed.
Plenty of Gray Areas
We have tackled the easy part concerning medical cannabis inhalation. Now let us get to the hard part: the many gray areas that evade hard and fast rules. To illustrate, we will use the state of Utah as an example.
Utah lawmakers have outlawed medical cannabis consumption in public. State law does not differentiate between delivery methods. Therefore, according to the letter of the law, a patient could not even consume a tincture or THC gummies in public. All medical cannabis use needs to be relegated to private spaces not subject to public observation.
But wait. How would someone know that a patient is consuming a medical cannabis gummy? According to the operators of the Zion Medicinal medical cannabis pharmacy in Cedar City, medical cannabis gummies are indistinguishable (on sight) from candies containing no THC.
If a patient were popping a gummy or two while sitting on a park bench, passersby likely would have no clue. It would be assumed that the person was eating candy. Does that make consuming gummies in public legal? No. But it does make enforcement a nightmare. So practically speaking, a medical cannabis patient could probably get away with it.
Federal Properties Are Also Off Limits
Federal properties are also off limits from medical cannabis consumption in Utah. Remember that cannabis is still federally illegal under the Controlled Substances Act. Therefore, it cannot be used in any form inside a federal building or on its premises.
What about workplaces? Regulations vary. Public employers in Utah must treat medical cannabis like any other prescription medication. Yet private employers can develop and implement replacement policies as they see fit. That means an employer could prohibit medical cannabis consumption on its property.
There is more to this issue than can be contained in a single post. Here’s the takeaway: there is no clear-cut answer to the question of using medical cannabis in public. Each case needs to be looked at based on its own merits and their relation to state law.
