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A pair of Hawaii House bills aimed at legalizing marijuana in the state are effectively dead for the 2026 session, key lawmakers say.<\/p>\n
Despite renewed hopes that the proposals\u2014including one from House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee Chairman David Tarnas (D) that would have put the issue of legalization before voters at the ballot\u2014would advance this year, the sponsor and House Speaker Nadine Nakamura (D) say there isn\u2019t enough support within the legislature to pass them this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re the same members from last year,\u201d Nakamura told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Friday, \u201cand when we checked around, it didn\u2019t sound like it would change anyone\u2019s mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just not a clear-cut \u2018let\u2019s do it,\u2019\u201d she said, adding that legislators \u201crepresent 1.4 million people\u201d across the state, and \u201cthe constituencies are so different and they have to represent their constituencies.\u201d The speaker said an informal head count of House lawmakers that leadership conducted last month revealed no clear signs that the general sentiment toward legalization had meaningfully changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe feedback we were getting from members is that this doesn\u2019t rise to the level of a constitutional amendment where we\u2019re changing the way government operates,\u201d Nakamura said<\/a>. \u201cThis is more of an issue that should be addressed within the body.\u201d<\/p>\n If the legislature agreed to advance the latest legalization plan, voters would see this on their November ballots:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cShall the Constitution of the State of Hawaii be amended to:<\/p>\n (1) Authorize individuals aged twenty-one and older to use and possess personal-use amounts of cannabis; and<\/p>\n (2) Require the legislature to enact laws governing the use, manufacture, distribution, sale, possession, regulation, and taxation of cannabis within the State?\u201d<\/p>\n If a majority of voters approved the ballot measure, cannabis legalization would take effect on July 1, 2027.<\/p>\n Tarnas, for his part, said he believes \u201cthe bill we put out this year addressed the concerns better than the bill last year.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think we got more votes from our internal polling but it\u2019s not enough. So I still need to keep working on it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m being courteously persistent. I think it\u2019s incumbent upon me to continue the conversation in a productive way and a collaborative way to address the concerns of House members and the concerns of the chairs of those committees that have referred the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n A Senate version of the legislation is still technically in play, but the same political dynamics on the House side would still complicate its path to passage if it were to cross over to that chamber.<\/p>\n Karen O\u2019Keefe, state policies director at the Marijuana Policy Project, told Marijuana Moment on Monday that the Hawaii House \u201cis not only blocking legalization against the wishes of those it represents, but it is also depriving voters of the transparency needed to hold their lawmakers accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLast year, instead of allowing a floor vote on legalization, the House sent legalization back to committees it had already passed due to a lack of \u2018consensus,’\u201d she said. \u201cThis deprived voters of the knowledge of where their representatives stood. Now, it appears poised to kill a voter-referral and a legalization trigger bill, with no committee hearings or votes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHawai\u2019i voters deserve a chance to legalize cannabis if their lawmakers are unwilling to do so. And they deserve to know which lawmakers are responsible for their continued criminalization,\u201d O\u2019Keefe said. \u201cWe hope the Senate has more respect for liberty, democracy, and transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n State officials last month released a report on the potential economic impact of recreational marijuana legalization in the state<\/a>, including revenue implications related to domestic and international tourism.<\/p>\n All told, researchers said survey data and comparative analyses indicate that Hawaii could see anywhere from $46-$90 million in monthly marijuana sales by year five of implementation, after accounting for a maximum 15 percent tax rate on cannabis products.<\/p>\n Hawaii\u2019s Senate last year narrowly defeated a proposal that would have increased fivefold the amount of cannabis that a person could possess without risk of criminal charges<\/a>.<\/p>\n Had the measure become law, it would have increased the amount of cannabis decriminalized in Hawaii from the current 3 grams up to 15 grams. Possession of any amount of marijuana up to that 15-gram limit would have been classified as a civil violation, punishable by a fine of $130.<\/p>\n A Senate bill that would have legalized marijuana for adults, meanwhile, ultimately stalled for the session. That measure, SB 1613, failed to make it out of committee by a legislative deadline.<\/p>\n While advocates felt there was sufficient support for the legalization proposal in the Senate, it\u2019s widely believed that House lawmakers would have ultimately scuttled the measure,\u00a0as they did last February with a legalization companion bill, HB 1246<\/a>.<\/p>\n In 2024, a\u00a0Senate-passed legalization bill also fizzled out in the House<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last year\u2019s House vote to stall the bill came just days after\u00a0approval from a pair of committees at a joint hearing<\/a>. Ahead of that hearing, the panels received nearly 300 pages of testimony, including from state agencies, advocacy organizations and members of the public.<\/p>\n Green signed separate legislation last year to\u00a0allow medical marijuana caregivers to grow marijuana on behalf of up to five patients<\/a>\u00a0rather than the current one.<\/p>\n And in July, the governor signed another bill that\u00a0establishes a number of new rules around hemp products in Hawaii<\/a>, including a requirement that distributors and retailers obtain a registration from the Department of Health.<\/p>\n Lawmakers also sent a bill to the governor that would\u00a0help speed the expungement process for people hoping to clear their records of past marijuana-related offenses<\/a>\u2014a proposal\u00a0Green signed into law last April<\/a>.<\/p>\n That measure, HB 132, from Tarnas, is intended to expedite expungements happening through\u00a0a pilot program signed into law in 2024 by Green<\/a>. Specifically, it will remove a distinction between marijuana and other Schedule V drugs for the purposes of the expungement program.<\/p>\n The bill\u2019s proponents said the current wording of the law forces state officials to comb through thousands of criminal records manually in order to identify which are eligible for expungement under the pilot program.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in November, Hawaii officials finalized rules that will\u00a0allow medical marijuana dispensaries to sell an expanded assortment of products for patients<\/a>\u2014including dry herb vaporizers, rolling papers and grinders\u2014while revising the state code to clarify that cannabis oils and concentrates can be marketed for inhalation.<\/p>\n The department also\u00a0affirmed its support for federal marijuana rescheduling<\/a>\u2014a policy change that President Donald Trump ordered to be completed expeditiously but has yet to come to fruition.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Hawaii lawmakers recently advanced a bill to allow qualifying patients to access medical marijuana at health facilities<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014 Regulators are also launching a series of courses designed to\u00a0educate physicians and other healthcare professionals about medical marijuana<\/a>\u00a0as the state\u2019s cannabis program expands.<\/p>\n The\u00a0underlying medical marijuana expansion bill signed by the governor<\/a>\u00a0in late June, in addition to allowing more patients to more easily access cannabis, also contains a provision that advocates find problematic.<\/p>\n Before lawmakers sent the legislation to Green, a conference committee revised the plan, inserting a provision to allow DOH to access medical marijuana patient records held by doctors for any reason whatsoever.<\/p>\n Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis \/\/ Side Pocket Images.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Hawaii Marijuana Legalization Bills Are Likely Dead For 2026 Session, Key Lawmakers Say<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A pair of Hawaii House bills aimed at legalizing marijuana in the state are effectively dead for the 2026 session, key lawmakers say. Despite renewed hopes that the proposals\u2014including one from House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee Chairman David Tarnas (D) that would have put the issue of legalization beforeContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":85392,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85391"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85393,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85391\/revisions\/85393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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