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Hawaii lawmakers have approved a bill to allow patients to immediately access medical cannabis once their registrations are submitted, instead of having to wait until their cards are delivered as is the case under current law.<\/p>\n
At a joint hearing of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and Commerce and Consumer Protections Committee <\/span>on Wednesday, members approved the legislation from Sen. Angus McKelvey (D), with an amendment lowering the one-time purchase limit to one ounce of cannabis instead of the two ounces that would have been covered by the measure as introduced.<\/p>\n Sen. Joy San Buenaventura (D), chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, said at the hearing that she believes regulators are equipped to track those interim sales \u201cusing administrative rules as required,\u201d and she said her support it partly informed by personal experience.<\/p>\n The chairwoman said SB 3315<\/a> could have helped her family as they supported a terminally ill relative, \u201cwhere we tried every possible prescriptive ability\u201d and \u201creally needed that one-time use.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo for those reasons, I\u2019m going to be passing [the bill] with amendments\u201d to reduce the purchase limit from two ounces to one ounce.<\/p>\n The measure\u2019s approval comes as legislators also weigh proposals to legalize marijuana in the state<\/a>, with action expected imminently.<\/p>\n Historically, it\u2019s been the Hawaii Senate that\u2019s proved more amenable to cannabis reform in the legislature\u2014and the 2026 session hasn\u2019t been any different so far.<\/p>\n That was evidenced, in part, after key House lawmakers announced earlier this month that\u00a0a pair of legalization bills that originated in the chamber were effectively dead for the year<\/a>.<\/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) said there wasn\u2019t enough support within the legislature to pass them this round.<\/p>\n State officials last month released a report on\u00a0the 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\u00a0increased 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 Gov. Josh Green (D) 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 Hawaii lawmakers recently advanced a bill to\u00a0allow 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> as the state\u2019s cannabis proagram 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 The post Hawaii Lawmakers Approve Bill To Let Patients Access Medical Marijuana Immediately Instead Of Having To Wait For Registration Processing<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Hawaii lawmakers have approved a bill to allow patients to immediately access medical cannabis once their registrations are submitted, instead of having to wait until their cards are delivered as is the case under current law. At a joint hearing of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and CommerceContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":85425,"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\/85424"}],"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=85424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85426,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85424\/revisions\/85426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Hawaii Lawmakers Approve Bill To Let Patients Access Medical Marijuana Immediately Instead Of Having To Wait For Registration Processing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"