Cannabis bills move forward despite mixed signals from Green’s team

Gov. Josh Green says he supports legalizing cannabis for adults 21 and older, but his newly installed department heads haven’t backed two bills advanced by the Senate on Thursday that would accomplish that goal.

Green’s attorney general submitted official testimony this week opposing both bills, while the state Department of Health, which has been regulating the state’s medical cannabis industry, took no position on the measures but said it was “highly concerned” about health impacts if recreational cannabis were legalized.

Blake Oshiro, a senior adviser to Green, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the governor remained supportive of allowing adults to use cannabis but he wants to make sure that any legislation protects public safety and consumers.

Oshiro, a former lobbyist for the medical cannabis industry, said Green also wants to make sure that legalization of recreational cannabis doesn’t harm the state’s medical cannabis industry.

“These are complicated issues, and so he has encouraged his departments to state their concerns, but to make suggestions if there are ways to mitigate them,” Oshiro said in a statement. Should a bill pass the Legislature that “accounts for his primary concerns, he has indicated he will likely sign it.”

It’s unusual for testimony from department heads not to align with the policy platform of the governor, and the lack of support for the two bills caught some supporters of the effort to legalize cannabis by surprise. Green’s election to governor boosted expectations that Hawaii would join nearly two dozen states that have legalized recreational cannabis use in the past decade.

“I think it’s very disconcerting that (Green’s) AG offers an opposed position rather than comments,” said Nikos Leverenz, president of the Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii, which supports legalization. “It indicates that this governor has said one thing on the campaign trail and is now saying something else.”

But Hawaii senators who introduced the bills that would legalize recreational cannabis for adults said they weren’t too concerned about the testimony from Green’s department heads.

“I fully expect that if something gets to the governor’s desk, the governor will sign it,” said Sen. Chris Lee (D, Hawaii Kai-Waimanalo-Kailua), who introduced Senate Bill 375. “I don’t know how engaged the governor has been with the AG or various departments in that kind of way, but I think there is a path forward there.”

Lee said the state Attorney General’s Office in past years has been “extremely difficult and very inflexible” on the issue of legalizing cannabis even though a growing number of states have passed legalization laws.

Sen. Joy San Buenaventura (D, Puna-Kau) also said that she saw “light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Departments generally fall into line,” she said, in regard to aligning their positions with the governor’s policy platform. But San Buenaventura said that the Attorney General Office’s written testimony was more measured this year than in past years.

“There is a tempering of their response because they actually say, ‘Well, if you insist on doing this, here are our proposed amendments,’” she said. “So it allows us at least, from the lawmakers’ standpoint because we determine policy, a path forward that the attorney general can defend. Before, it was just a blanket ‘No, you cannot do this.’”

In December the newly elected governor announced that Anne Lopez was his pick to the lead the Attorney General’s Office. She most recently served as vice president and general counsel for the Hawaii Health Systems Corp., which oversees the state’s “safety net” hospitals and long-term care facilities.

In opposing both cannabis legalization bills, Lopez outlined an array of concerns about the measures and underscored the challenges in enforcing against unlicensed activity. In written testimony, she said the state needs to further study “issues relating to community safety, protection of minors, and enforcing laws against unlicensed cannabis operators” and should shelve the bills.

But her department also recommended changes to the bills in the event they move forward, including clarifying whether the state’s anti-smoking laws, which prohibit smoking or vaping in public places of businesses, would also apply to cannabis, and cleaning up language that would ease the conflicts with federal law, which still outlaws the sale or possession of cannabis. Lopez also testified that distributing cannabis to anyone under age 21 should remain a criminal offense.

The Department of Health, which is now led by Dr. Kenneth Fink, offered comments on both bills while not taking a position for or against them. While praising some of the bills’ provisions, such as increasing public education around cannabis and requiring black lettering on packaging that doesn’t contain colors, pictures or cartoons that could appeal to kids, the DOH registered its concerns about health impacts.

While both bills would restrict cannabis use to those 21 and older, the DOH said that the human brain continues to develop into the mid-20s and remains vulnerable to the effects of addictive substances.

“Protecting young adults who are legally allowed to use cannabis but still very vulnerable to its detrimental effects will be challenging,” the DOH said in written testimony.

The department also said that there is substantial evidence that adolescents and adults who use cannabis daily or near-daily are more likely to develop a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia and that there is moderate evidence that it can increase suicidal thoughts in children and young adults.

The DOH also raised concerns that cannabis use by pregnant women could harm their babies, causing lower birth weights and developmental disabilities, including decreased IQ scores. About 3% to 7% of pregnant women nationally report using cannabis while pregnant, according to the Health Department.

Additionally, the DOH testified that despite various regulatory controls and education requirements embedded in the bills, it “remains highly concerned about increased health impacts arising from the increased accessibility of cannabis that legalized adult use will bring.”

Despite ongoing concerns about cannabis legalization by some state agencies and policymakers, supporters say Hawaii is likely poised to legalize it soon, if not this year.

A Star-Advertiser poll in 2022 found that 58% of registered voters said they supported legalizing recreational cannabis to generate tax revenue, while 34% were against it and 8% were undecided. Support among Democrats, who overwhelmingly control the Legislature and state politics, was 70%.

“This is something that has been talked about for decades, and we all know that it has been available on the street corner in a black market that isn’t regulated,” said Lee. “To be able to do something constructive that would limit access where it needs to be and provide safer products for those that want it and raise money for the state to deal with potholes in our roads and better schools and all those other things is just kind of a no-brainer.”

Green, during his campaign for governor in 2022, said that he would like to use tax revenue generated from recreational cannabis sales for improving Hawaii’s mental health system.

Both Senate Bill 375 and House Bill 669 require further hearings in the Senate before they can cross over to the House of Representatives for debate.