In its last major act of this year’s session, the Legislature has sent Gov. David Ige a bill that would give thousands of medical marijuana patients access to dispensaries in Hawaii.

The Senate voted unanimously and the House voted 36-13 to pass House Bill 321, which allows for 16 medical pot dispensaries across the state, including six on Oahu. The move comes 15 years after state leaders authorized the prescription and use of the drug but failed to create a dispensary system where patients could purchase it, leaving patients to cultivate the pot on their own or acquire it on the black market.

"We should have done this much earlier — it should have been much simpler," Sen. Sam Slom (R, Kahala-Hawaii Kai) said moments before the Senate vote. "Some of the patients that depended on us for use are no longer with us today."

House and Senate lawmakers closed out the regular 60-day legislative session Thursday with high praise for one another for their accomplishments, which also included finally moving forward on other knotty problems such as privatizing state-run hospitals in Maui County and extending the excise tax surcharge to support Hono­lulu’s rail project.

In his closing speech on the House floor, Majority Leader Scott Saiki said the Demo­cratic caucus "took on major challenges that festered here at the Legislature for many years. These challenges affect the structure of our government, the infrastructure of our islands and the well-being of our residents."

Sen. Rosalyn Baker (D, West Maui-South Maui) praised the marijuana dispensaries bill for reflecting the work of a task force composed of medical pot advocates, law enforcement, lawmakers, state officials and others who met extensively last year and recommended a path forward for a dispensary system.

By establishing dispensaries, state leaders would ensure that "those patients that need medical marijuana to ease their pains, their convulsions, their other maladies that other kinds of pharmaceuticals or remedies don’t provide any relief, and we will now have a way to do that in a safe, controlled and effective way," Baker said.

But the marijuana dispensaries bill came in for some harsh criticism in the House, where Rep. Bob McDermott (R, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point) said the move to establish up to 16 dispensary sites under the bill is vastly out of proportion to the "infinitesimally small need out there" for medical marijuana.

"Perhaps a boutique-style solution, much smaller in scale, would be more appropriate, but this … seems to me to be putting the infrastructure in place for full-blown legalization within five years, and I don’t think we need more booze and I don’t think we need more drugs," he said.

McDermott said the state should provide access to medical marijuana for people who genuinely need it, but said many advocates for the dispensary bill are actually seeking outright legalization. Once they are successful in establishing dispensaries, those facilities can readily be converted to retail outlets with just a few "tweaks," he suggested.

Some lawmakers agree. In fact, Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English (D, East Maui-Upcountry-Molo­kai-Lanai) told his colleagues on the Senate floor that legalization of recreational marijuana use is the "next step for Hawaii," adding that the Legislature would address the issue in the next session.

Rep. Marcus Oshiro (D, Wahiawa-Whitmore-Poa­moho) cited more than a dozen features in the bill that he considers flaws. Oshiro also said he also supports a well-run, carefully regulated system for providing medical marijuana to patients, but said the proposed law does not properly spell out how the operators of the potentially lucrative dispensaries will be selected.

"We only have one shot at doing the right thing the right way," he said. When the state allows private operators to open up shop here, "we are bringing a new enterprise to Hawaii’s shores, and it will be equal to or greater in the effect upon Hawaii’s people than the harvesting of sandalwood or whaling in the 1800s."

Oshiro also cited language in the bill that allows dispensary operators to subcontract portions of their operations, a provision he said could be used to subvert requirements for background checks and other safeguards.

House Health Chairwoman Della Au Belatti disagreed, saying the bill spells out that potential dispensary operators will be evaluated for their financial stability as well as their ability to operate a business, meet security requirements and exercise inventory controls. They will also be required to pass background checks, she said.

"This truly to me is the people’s bill, Mr. Speaker," said Belatti (D, Moiliili-Makiki-Tantalus). "It has had many hands work on it."

The session was punctuated by a rare and startling change of leadership in the Senate in the last week, but House and Senate lawmakers said that leadership turmoil did not halt the flow of legislation.

On Tuesday state Sen. Ron Kouchi abruptly replaced Sen. Donna Mercado Kim as Senate president, a transition that is so fresh that the new Senate leadership only announced portions of its new committee organization Wednesday evening.

In some ways the session was proof positive of the political skills of House Speaker Joe Souki, who entered the 2015 session determined to drive the Legislature forward on several difficult and controversial issues.

One was the effort to establish a system of medical marijuana dispensaries, and another was finding a way to allow the state-run hospitals on his home island of Maui to be privatized despite the concerns of wary public worker unions that represent the hospital workers.

Souki (D, Waihee-Wai­ehu-Wai­luku) also began the session with the clear objective of extending the half-percent excise tax surcharge on Oahu to bail out the Hono­lulu rail project, which is suffering from a $910 million budget shortfall.

While House and Senate lawmakers bargained with one another over the length of the tax extension and the specific features of the bill, Souki remained focused: The important thing, he said during the session, is to keep the project moving.

Each of those bills — marijuana dispensaries, the Maui privatization bill and the excise tax extension — ran into difficulties that put them in jeopardy during the session, but each of them passed in the end.

Souki cited those accomplishments and more in his closing remarks on the House floor, praising his colleagues for their work, their vision and their courage.

"We did it not to make headlines, but to make Hawaii the kind of place we are all proud to call home," he said. "We did it for our families and our communities."