Bay County, FL Cannabis Regulations: Home Cultivation (2026)

Florida's Compassionate Use registry program, created by Fla. 986, only authorizes marijuana that a qualified patient or caregiver purchases from a state-licensed medical marijuana treatment center (MMTC). Subsection (2)(k), defining "medical use," expressly excludes "[p]ossession, use, or administration of marijuana that was not purchased or acquired from a medical marijuana treatment center" and separately excludes marijuana seeds from qualifying products, so a plant grown from seed at home is never medical use no matter what a patient's physician certification says. Subsection (5)(f) lets the Florida Department of Health revoke a qualified patient's or caregiver's registry identification card if the department finds that person cultivated marijuana or acquired it from anyone other than an MMTC.

Subsection (12)(d) then converts the same conduct into a criminal offense: a qualified patient or caregiver who cultivates marijuana, or who purchases or acquires it from a non-MMTC source, "violates s. 13 and is subject to the penalties provided therein," pulling in Florida's ordinary drug-cultivation and trafficking penalty ladder, which starts at third-degree-felony exposure for a small personal grow and rises with plant count. Subsection (8) separately preempts regulation of marijuana cultivation and processing by licensed treatment centers to the state, and nothing in the statute gives a county or municipality authority to authorize an individual home grow.

986 is a state law, the ban binds the unincorporated Bay County area the same way it binds Panama City, Panama City Beach, Lynn Haven, Callaway, Springfield and Parker; no city or county commission inside Bay County can legalize what the state criminalizes.