Connecticut Now Requires Certain Marijuana Products to Be Reserved for Medical Patients for 14 Days Before Adult-Use Sale

Connecticut marijuana businesses must now reserve certain products exclusively for medical patients for 14 days before making them available to adult-use consumers, with newly issued state guidance clarifying that the requirement applies to every new shipment.

The Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection issued the guidance on October 1, the same day the requirement took effect under Public Act 26-8.

Products subject to the medical-priority period include marijuana concentrates such as extracts, oils, tinctures, shatter and waxes; topical treatments other than transdermal patches; creams; tablets and capsules; rosin; and products intended for sublingual absorption.

At the retail level, hybrid retailers must offer an entire shipment of those products exclusively to medical patients, caregivers, qualifying out-of-state patients and out-of-state caregivers for 14 consecutive days before any of that shipment can be sold to adult-use consumers.

The Department of Consumer Protection clarified that the requirement applies not only when a product is initially introduced, but to every subsequent shipment.

For example, if a hybrid retailer receives 1,000 new units of a product while still possessing 30 units from a shipment received 15 days earlier, the older inventory can be sold to both medical patients and adult-use consumers. The newly received 1,000 units, however, must remain reserved exclusively for medical patients for another 14 days.

Medical patients do not have to actually purchase the inventory for the requirement to be satisfied. As long as the entire shipment has been offered exclusively to patients both in-store and on the hybrid retailer’s website for the full 14-day period, remaining products can then be offered to adult-use customers.

After the holding period expires, products registered for both the medical and adult-use markets must remain available to medical patients as well. Hybrid retailers cannot move the inventory exclusively to the recreational market.

Products registered and labeled as medical-only remain restricted to medical sales even after the 14-day period.

The law also imposes a separate 14-day requirement at the wholesale level. Producers, cultivators, micro-cultivators, product packagers, product manufacturers and food and beverage manufacturers must initially reserve covered products for sale exclusively to dispensary facilities and hybrid retailers for at least 14 days before offering them to adult-use retailers.

The Department of Consumer Protection also says marijuana businesses may not charge medical patients more or otherwise impose different terms during the period in which the products are reserved for them.

The requirement is part of Public Act 26-8, a broad marijuana and hemp law enacted earlier this year. The statute explicitly requires hybrid retailers to reserve each shipment of designated “palliative use cannabis products” for medical patients for at least 14 days after receiving it.

Connecticut also implemented several other marijuana changes October 1, including eliminating the state’s potency ceiling for adult-use concentrates and allowing qualifying medical marijuana patients registered in other states to purchase medical products in Connecticut.