A bill to allow medical marijuana dispensaries across Hawaii — nearly 15 years after state leaders made medical use of the drug permissible — is still alive in the House.
Members of the chamber’s Health and Judiciary committees passed an amended House Bill 321 during their joint hearing Tuesday. With the measure’s latest changes, at least 26 dispensary licenses would be offered to applicants to serve Hawaii’s nearly 13,000 qualified patients.
Previously, the bill would have required all 26 of those licenses to be filled at a minimum, regardless of demand. Several groups, including the state attorney general’s office, had flagged that as an issue in written testimony.
Currently, it’s up to all of the state’s marijuana patients to grow their own supply, a notion that bill supporters call highly unrealistic. "In order to qualify you have to be really sick" — and many such patients wouldn’t be able to cultivate, let alone wait for the marijuana to grow, said Michelle Tippens, a Makiki resident and medical marijuana advocate, after the hearing Tuesday.
The bill, she said, was needed for "availability and functionality" of medical marijuana for those who qualify.
However, in its testimony opposing the measure (similar to other local law enforcement groups), the Hawaii Police Department said that only 12 of that island’s more than 5,400 qualified patients were not growing their own medical marijuana. The testimony stated that figure was based on December 2014 statistics, but it didn’t specify further.
Lawmakers have introduced bills striving to set up licensing or dispensary systems for several years now without success.
Nonetheless, Rep. Della Au Belatti (D, Moiliili-Makiki-Tantalus), who chairs the Health Committee, said she’s confident dispensary advocates could see a framework finally passed into law this year. HB 321, she said, reflects thorough work done by the Legislature’s Hawaii Medical Marijuana Dispensary Task Force, which was convened at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s College of Social Sciences after last year’s session.
"This last summer there was really a concentrated effort" by the task force’s patients, caregivers, law enforcement and state agency representatives to address dispensary issues, Belatti said Tuesday.
Also, Gov. David Ige has expressed support for giving qualified users legal access to the drug, his spokeswoman said Tuesday. Ige did not vote to approve the original 2000 act allowing medical marijuana use when he was a lawmaker because it didn’t offer such a mechanism for providing the drug to patients, said Cindy McMillan, Ige’s spokeswoman.
The House measure is slated to go next before the Finance Committee.
