The Landlord Lens - Marijuana in Rentals: What Landlords Can and Can't Do

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

What happens if your tenant starts growing marijuana in your rental?In this video, we break down what landlords can and can’t do when it comes to marijuana use, grow operations, and lease enforcement. Laws vary by state, but there are still clear ways to protect your property, stay compliant, and avoid costly mistakes.We’ll cover:Can you ban smoking or growing marijuana in your rental?What to do if you discover a grow operationHow to write lease clauses that actually hold upCommon mistakes landlords make (and how to avoid them)Whether you’re dealing with this right now or just want to protect yourself moving forward, this is what you need to know.

The chance for a tenant, qualified or otherwise, to smoke weed in your unit, is going up and up and up. Whether you have Class C rentals or all the way to Class A, at some point you were going to be renting to a tenant who uses marijuana. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Landlord Lens. Today we're going to be talking about everyone's favorite plant, marijuana. Yes, we are, John. And the reality is, with it being legal in 24 states, medical, It is legal in 40 states, no matter where you're located, whether you have Class C rentals or all the way to

Class A, at some point you are going to be renting to a tenant who uses marijuana. Basically, the chance for a tenant qualified or otherwise to smoke weed in your unit is going up and up and up. You're going to run into this. Or at least want to, right? At least want to, yeah. That's what we're here to talk about, right? Yes. What can you as a landlord actually do as it pertains to marijuana?

Yeah, and it turns out there's a lot. It is very legal for you to restrict smoking weed in your unit wherever you are. Yes, you can ban it, right? Regardless of whether it is medical or not, you can ban the smoking of marijuana in your apartment. What's also really interesting is you can ban the growing of marijuana in your apartment. And it's pretty wild. Some of our home state of Colorado, you could grow 12 plants in your residency. right? You can get your whole greenhouse there.

Love the fact, though, that only three can be flowering at a time. Yeah. Right? So you got to be smart in timing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But you, as a landlord, you don't have to actually allow that in your rental. And there's good reasons you may not want to.

Yeah, a lot of very good reasons. The mold risk, because especially in places like Colorado or Arizona, right, where most of the buildings have been built for a certain assumption that there wouldn't be a lot of humidity. suddenly, you know, the humidity level going up in a building can really screw with the wood, break things, cause mold, right? You've also got fire risk because you've got a ton of electricity going into one room. Or in some cases, the one closet. Oh, yeah, or in that one closet. That one walk-in closet that has become a greenhouse.

And you've also got system overload problems for the entire neighborhood or for the building, if it's a multi-unit, where you're going to be trip and breakers. or screwed up the electrical load. Yeah, absolutely. And if you're one of those landlords that does not pass the expense of utilities onto your tenant, you could see some pretty high utility rates.

Yes. I'll tell a brief story here for a sec because I actually lived next to a grow house out in Lakewood here in Colorado. Your grow house? Not my grow house. No, I didn't actually know it was a grow house causing the problem for about two weeks.

But basically, so the way Growhouses work, I found out, is on a fixed schedule, they turn on the lights and they turn off the lights. So they don't need to be, they can optimize the growing of this weed or whatever. So like clockwork every day at 9 o'clock until 12, my internet speed would drop significantly. And I have no idea why I was calling our internet provider. I was like, what is going on? I worked from home, and this was before we had an office, and what's going on? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And one night, two months later or so, cop cars pulled up to the house, two houses down.

And after that, and the grow operation was busted, I never had any more internet problems. So this is what this kind of like intense electrical activity can really do not only to your property, but your neighbor's property. it can impact your reputation. It's out there. It's everywhere. There's real risks to allowing it in your unit, right? And both the cosmetic kind of odor side of smoking it, but then growing it, I think, is actually more dangerous, right? It puts your unit at higher risk.

So as a landlord, what's the best thing to do and how do you actually ban it? Yeah, so there's some pre-written lease provisions, and we'll talk about them in a little bit. but you can actually protect yourself by banning all smoking and you can ban growing certain plants in your building. And so you actually have pulled up, I think, some lease language that you can consider adding into your lease. Yeah. So as we were researching this topic and trying to understand how each state kind of handles it differently, we came across this language, which I really like, and I'll just read directly here, which is regardless of state law, the cultivation,

production and growth of marijuana is strictly prohibited on the premises. Any violation of this provision shall be considered a material breach of the lease. And so dropping something like this into your lease, right, alongside the different rules, like no smoking inside and stuff, helps protect you and gives you some defensibility if you find that a tenant is growing marijuana on the premises and you need to go through an eviction process or even just remind them, hey, this isn't legal. Yeah. And I think a lot of landlords right now watching are imagining a litigious tenant and thinking,

well, some of them are going to claim some kind of medical exemption here. And good news, courts roundly in most states have basically found that you don't need to accommodate smoking or growing at your property for a medically permitted use of marijuana. They can go buy that somewhere else. You're not required to allow them to grow in your house just because they have a medical card. Yeah, it's much different in that case from like service animals. Right. And different pets, right, where you do actually have to allow it.

It turns out that just because you have a prescription for marijuana does not mean you get to grow a bunch of marijuana on the premises. Exactly. So your lease can protect you there. Now, the other thing, and we'll talk about this in general is how do you, okay, so your lease protects it, but there's not really a great way to catch it, right, before damage might get done, right? And so that's where I think really the midterm mid-lease inspection comes in, right? It's within your right. You should also make sure you add this into your lease that with proper notice, you can do an inspection of the property. Not a bad thing to go ahead and do in order to just make sure that there is in a large grow operation taking place.

I also always think that landlords, when there is a maintenance request, even if they're not the service provider doing it, it never hurts to actually. go over there with the service provider. Yeah. Right. One, you can kind of ensure quality of the maintenance is high into your liking. But two, it also gives you an opportunity to once again step foot into

the property and see whether or not there are any other lease violations happening at that time. Make sure you're getting proper permission according to your lease. But that's something that I think every landlord should jump at those opportunities to get into the, get

to the property and just make sure everything's kosher. Bottom line, weed is everywhere in America now. Even if you're in those 10 states where it's not medically legal, it's very likely there's still weed around. So I highly recommend you tighten up your lease and understand what sort of actions you can take to prevent or at least discourage significantly your rental unit being used as a grow operation.

John, what advice do we have for our audience right now that's watching this? And it's like, come, my guys chill out a little too straight edge yeah so it turns out most of the prohibition of marijuana growing things like that um most of the uh laws about what landlords can or do or do not permit has to do with damage um so you're allowed to prohibit behavior on your property that could cause damage such as smoking right or uh you know bong water spilled on a couch You can imagine these things that cause legitimate damage.

It gets a lot hairier when you look at things like edibles, where the proof of use is you have to do illegal stuff to prove that they're actually using it, right? You can't really make your tenants do a P test or something, right? And that's where it starts getting fuzzy that landlords can, if they're a little less straight edge, can maybe start playing with the rules there. Yeah, and most attorneys are going to suggest that stick to no smoking, vaping, growing, right, but leave edibles, for example, tinctures off the table. Yeah.

Don't go about trying to ban those, because enforcing it is really hard because the lack of evidence. Exactly. And you can always, you know, be less broad in your language and your lease for things like the smoking provision, which is in most leases you download or find from real estate organizations and things. Just go doctor that a little bit to make it match your case. Be specific about the kind of smoking you don't allow.

Don't just say no smoking. You can say no nicotine smoking. And, you know, there's some leeway in there that you can maybe verbally explain. Absolutely. And be upfront about it. In the same way, if no pets are allowed, you know, and that's something you'd share in a showing or even before someone signs a lease, make sure you're very explicit around your stance on marijuana and smoking and growing on your property so that the tenant is also making the right decision for them. Yeah. Right?

And you're not getting yourself into a situation where you've got a tenant that maybe looks great in terms of their financial ability to pay rent, but has different habits or behavior. that are going to cause these violations and problems down the road. That's right. Yep. If you're a landlord that has experience with tenants that were you using marijuana, or maybe you're a landlord that actually allows growing on the property, please sound off in the comments and let us know the situation. Thanks so much. Tune in next week for another episode of Landlord Lens.

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