Tennessee General Assembly has the opportunity to act on cannabis policy reform in 2025

Tennessee is one of only 11 states without a viable medical cannabis program and one of 19 states that continues to imprison individuals for possessing small amounts of cannabis — possession of a half-ounce or less is punishable by nearly a year of incarceration. In 2023, there were over 12,000 cannabis possession arrests in Tennessee.

With the Kentucky legislature enacting medical cannabis in 2023, Tennessee is now an island of backwards cannabis policies. Six of its eight border states have comprehensive medical cannabis laws, and the seventh — Georgia — has a more limited medical law, allowing products with up to 5% THC.

The 2025 legislative session is underway, but prospects for reform are looking bleak. As of this writing, the only cannabis policy legislation to have a hearing was SB0489. That bill  would have set up a comprehensive medical cannabis program. However, it could not even get a second legislator on the committee to ask for a vote to be taken (a “second”), therefore killing it for this year. No other cannabis legislation has been scheduled for a committee hearing.

Several bills were introduced in 2025 that would have legalized medical cannabis or legalized cannabis for adults. With the exception of SB 489, none of these bills have advanced to committee hearings. Let your legislators know you support medical cannabis or decriminalization.

Tennessee’s Low-THC Cannabis Program

Tennessee’s first CBD-focused law, SB 2531, was passed in 2014. It required that a hospital or state university-affiliated clinic supervise the study of cannabis oil for certain patients with seizures. It did not materialize. In subsequent years, the limited program was improved and expanded, but it remains extremely limited.

In 2021, lawmakers expanded the state’s ineffective CBD law, passing SB 118 and allowing additional medical conditions to qualify and increasing the allowable threshold of THC in CBD oils to 0.9%. The law now includes Alzheimer's disease; Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; cancer, if it is end stage or the treatment produces related wasting illness, recalcitrant nausea and vomiting, or pain; inflammatory bowel disease; epilepsy or seizures; multiple sclerosis; Parkinson's disease; HIV or AIDS; sickle cell disease; or any other disease or condition recommended by the Medical Cannabis Commission pursuant to rules it promulgates.

The state’s low THC/CBD law grants legal protections from prosecution to patients enrolled in the program but includes no legal access to cannabis products. Products must be purchased from legal dispensaries in states with reciprocity provisions in their medical cannabis programs and brought back to Tennessee.

SB 118 also created the Tennessee Medical Cannabis Commission to study and recommend medical cannabis policy. In January, 2022, the Tennessee Medical Cannabis Commission issued a report to the legislature recommending improvements to the high-CBD/low-THC program. The report recommended allowing cannabis oils, tinctures, patches, edibles, vapors, and waxes, but not dried botanical cannabis (flower). The Commission also recommended employee protections and parental rights for those participating in the program. Nursing home and school-aged patients would have allowances for medical use on-site. None of the recommendations were taken up by the General Assembly in 2022, 2023, or 2024, and it does not appear that it will be taken up in 2025.

The Tennessee Medical Marijuana Commission has been studying other states’ programs with the goal of submitting recommendations to the legislature before the 2024 legislative session on how a program should be implemented and regulated. The Commission failed to provide the legislature with this information. Due to issues with achieving a quorum in most meetings in 2024, the 2025 report was very limited. It is expected that those issues will be resolved and the Commission will begin meeting regularly again in 2025.

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Tennessee voters support allowing patients and doctors to decide whether to use medical cannabis. Ask your state lawmakers to listen to voters and pass medical cannabis legislation.

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