{"id":76587,"date":"2024-06-25T09:30:41","date_gmt":"2024-06-25T17:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/06\/25\/hawaii-governor-signs-marijuana-expungement-pilot-program-bill-into-law\/"},"modified":"2024-06-26T06:47:28","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T14:47:28","slug":"hawaii-governor-signs-marijuana-expungement-pilot-program-bill-into-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2024\/06\/25\/hawaii-governor-signs-marijuana-expungement-pilot-program-bill-into-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawaii Governor Signs Marijuana Expungement Pilot Program Bill Into Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) has signed into law a marijuana expungements bill to launch a single-county pilot program<\/a> aimed at clearing certain past offenses. A separate measure to create a task force that would craft broader expungement-focused legislation, meanwhile, is also poised to become law.<\/p>\n

Green approved the cannabis-specific legislation, HB 1595, without issuing a formal signing statement. The new pilot program will work to expunge non-conviction marijuana arrest records<\/a> in Hawaii County, home to about 14 percent of the state\u2019s population. The county comprises the Big Island and is the state\u2019s second most populous after Honolulu County.<\/p>\n

As originally introduced, the measure from Rep. David Tarnas (D) would have directed state officials to automatically expunge tens of thousands of arrest and<\/em> conviction records<\/a> for low-level marijuana possession. But the Senate Judiciary Committee later gutted the proposal, replacing the statewide plan with a pilot program in Hawaii County<\/a>\u00a0that would apply only to non-conviction arrest records.<\/p>\n

The scaled-back approach is the product of an amendment from Attorney General Anne Lopez (D), whose office told Marijuana Moment in an interview<\/a> earlier this year that the issue was budgetary, claiming that \u201cthere simply isn\u2019t the money available for new kinds of projects that aren\u2019t deemed necessary or crucial to the recovery\u201d following massive wildfires that tore through Maui last August.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt that a pilot project to show how that would work, and potentially what resources would be required for a larger expungement program, would be appropriate,\u201d said Dave Day, special assistant to the attorney general.<\/p>\n

Supporters see the plan as the beginning of what they hope will become a broader push to clear criminal records around cannabis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bill is a good first step by setting up a pilot project to expunge non-conviction arrest records of low-level cannabis-related offenses in one county,\u201d sponsor Tarnas told Marijuana Moment in an email after the Senate approved the bill<\/a> in April. \u201cLessons learned from this experience will help as the expungement effort expands statewide and to also include records of conviction of low-level cannabis-related offenses as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reform advocates said Green\u2019s approval of the pilot program on Friday represents a victory in the face of the legislature\u2019s failure to pass a marijuana legalization bill this session<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year\u2019s legalization push began with a redline drawn by the Hawai\u2019i Attorneys General Office that the Department would actively oppose any attempt to streamline record clearance,\u201d Adrian Rocha, policy manager for the Last Prisoner Project (LPP), told Marijuana Moment in a statement Tuesday. \u201cThrough persistence, diligence, and coordination among key stakeholders, LPP was able to pull together opposing parties to get this bill passed even though legalization did not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rocha praised Tarnas \u201cfor being a steady hand throughout this process\u201d and said advocates \u201clook forward to rolling our sleeves up and delivering relief for countless Hawaiians.\u201d<\/p>\n

A separate bill to expand the state\u2019s existing law decriminalizing small amounts of cannabis also failed to pass this session.<\/p>\n

The other expungements proposal, SB 2706, that is still awaiting action by the governor was not on a list<\/a> of bills Green\u2019s office said last week that he intends to veto. He has until the end of Tuesday to indicate which measures he intends to reject.<\/p>\n

That bill<\/a> would create a so-called Clean Slate Expungement Task Force charged with crafting legislation for a state-led record-clearing program. It does not explicitly mention cannabis, but marijuana-related offenses are widely expected to be included in the task force\u2019s discussions.<\/p>\n

Carrie Ann Shirota, policy director for ACLU of Hawai\u2019i, said the two bills are incremental reforms on the path toward broader justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cPassage of the cannabis expungement pilot project and Clean Slate Task Force bills is a small step forward to repair the decades of harm and life time barriers to employment, housing and other opportunities from the failed War on Drugs and mass incarceration policies,\u201d Shirota wrote in an email to Marijuana Moment. \u201cRampant racial disparities still remain and too many remain locked behind bars for innocuous cannabis charges in Hawai\u2018i. A more just system isn\u2019t possible until we legalize cannabis and all people incarcerated for cannabis are released and criminal records for these offenses are expunged.\u201d<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s deadline to sign legislation is July 10, although the expungements task force bill would also become law if Green does not take any formal action on it.<\/p>\n

Following the failure of the broader legalization push, Green said in April that he has \u201ca possible solution\u201d to the situation: vastly expanding the Hawaii\u2019s existing medical cannabis system<\/a> to allow people to register based on any<\/em>\u00a0health concern rather than needing to have one of a specific list of conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis would make it very available\u2014that\u2019s marijuana\u2014for those who choose it in their lives,\u201d the governor said in an interview with Hawaii News Now, \u201cand it would still keep kids safe, which has been everyone\u2019s priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Green reiterated his support for full recreational legalization.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think for adults who can responsibly use marijuana, it should be legal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This story has been updated with comments from ACLU of Hawai\u2019i and a corrected deadline for Gov. Green to signal if he intends to veto the task force bill.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Marijuana Rescheduling Won\u2019t Fulfill Biden\u2019s Campaign Pledge To Decriminalize (Op-Ed)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The post Hawaii Governor Signs Marijuana Expungement Pilot Program Bill Into Law<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) has signed into law a marijuana expungements bill to launch a single-county pilot program aimed at clearing certain past offenses. A separate measure to create a task force that would craft broader expungement-focused legislation, meanwhile, is also poised to become law. Green approved the cannabis-specificContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76588,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76587\/revisions\/76588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}