Do small wordings like &quot;no manufacturing drugs&quot; matter if a technicality is found? e.g. growing pot isn&#39;t a drug
<p>In contract law is small wordings important in the sense of getting out on technicalities important? For example a lease for a rental property may state "the premises may not be used for manufacturing drugs or other controlled substances". Could someone growing marijuana successfully argue that marijuana may be a drug but they weren't manufacturing it; they were growing it? I red in the question about gag orders and warrant canaries, these sorts of tricks don't really work. </p>

<p>Growing marijuana is very often legally classed as "manufacture of a controlled substance." In criminal law, "manufacture" tends to be explicitly defined to include cultivation, but this is in fact a reasonably common use of the term (it doesn't <em>have</em> to mean producing with machinery). And so it's extremely unlikely that anyone will be convinced that you even <em>might</em> have thought the agreement didn't cover growing marijuana. The intent of the parties is fairly clear there.</p>

<p>In general a contract is a shared understanding of an agreement between the parties - the words on paper are only necessary as evidence of what that understanding is.</p>

<p>If someone can convince a court that any word made a difference to how you understood the contract, then that could affect the ruling.</p>

<p>In this example I agree with cpast that a court would be unlikely to believe that 'manufacturing' was understood in a way that excludes growing plants.</p>

contract-law