Marijuana Moment
There are products that have not been subject to the same rigorous testing that the medical marijuana requires.”
By Stewart Yerton, Honolulu Civil Beat
It happens all the time now at Oʻahu Dispensary and Provisions in Waikīkī: A prospective customer like Blake Birdwell comes looking for a pre-rolled hemp cigarette or hemp-based edible, only to find the kiosk’s shelves are empty of such goods—by recent order of the Hawaiʻi Department of Health.
“It’s really shitty,” Birdwell said on a recent afternoon after making the rounds at other shops like Natural Mystic, Vape Hawaiʻi and Hawaiʻi’s Cheapest. “They’re all telling me, ‘No.’”
It’s a new reality for people like Birdwell who until recently were able to purchase a range of THC products without a medical marijuana card at dozens of shops across the state—often at a lower price than the products for sale at Hawaiʻi’s officially licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.
The state has now cracked down on sellers of hemp-based products that had been operating under a loophole in federal law, and that’s set up a battle in which Oʻahu Dispensary and Provisions’ owner, Lance Alyas, has asked a federal judge to stop the crackdown.
The suit, which alleges the state has improperly recriminalized federally legal hemp, has gained national attention in legal news reports. The free-market libertarian magazine Reason, which generally opposes government-regulated monopolies, has also weighed in.
It’s the latest iteration of an ongoing struggle to regulate cannabis in Hawaiʻi, which has become widely available for adults to use recreationally in two dozen states.
It’s also a matter of life and death for Alyas’ business, he says, which operates four locations on Oʻahu.
“We have 20 people at risk of losing their jobs,” he said.
Booming Market For Low-THC Hemp Products
Hemp is the same plant species as cannabis sativa—or marijuana—which is a federally controlled substance, though hemp has been historically grown for non-intoxicating uses and contains lower levels of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. Congress’s 2018 Farm Bill made hemp legal as long as the plants contained no more than 0.3 percent delta-9 THC, the ingredient that gets people high, by weight.
Read more
Hawaii Officials Defend Hemp Crackdown From Industry Lawsuit
