HONOLULU — The state is one step closer to establishing a system of medical marijuana dispensaries nearly 15 years after the drug became legal in Hawaii. ADVERTISING HONOLULU — The state is one step closer to establishing a system of
HONOLULU — The state is one step closer to establishing a system of medical marijuana dispensaries nearly 15 years after the drug became legal in Hawaii.
The state Senate on Tuesday passed a bill approving medical marijuana dispensaries. The next step is for senators and their colleagues in the House to work out their disagreements about how it should work.
For more than a decade, an estimated 13,000 patients approved to use the drug in the state generally have been left to buy it on the black market or grow it on their own.
“A lot of people on the neighbor islands where they have properties can grow, but mostly … people over 60 are often having to resort to going to the black market, or having a caregiver who goes to the black market, and it’s just a little bit unsafe,” said Sen. Josh Green, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health. “So, we can end the black-market question. We can treat it just as a medicine.”
The latest draft of HB 321 would allow up to one dispensary license to be granted in each county, and each license would cover up to one cultivation site and two dispensary locations. The idea is to have one dispensary on each island because taking marijuana interisland on planes would be problematic.
Earlier versions of the bill stated counties could not opt out of the dispensary system, but the current version leaves open the possibility a county could say no to opening a dispensary.
Senators disagreed about whether the customers and dispensary owners should be taxed for sales of the drug and how much dispensary owners should be charged to get in the business.
The latest committees to pass the bill recommended a 25 percent tax on sales that would be split between the dispensary and the patient.
“If we’re going to be providing medicine, it seems unreasonable that we should single this out to charge a high tax that we do not charge on other medicines,” said Sen. Gil Riviere, a Democrat who represents Kaneohe and parts of Oahu.
To open a dispensary, all applicants would be charged a $25,000 non-refundable application fee. Approved dispensaries would pay $75,000 for each license and an additional $25,000 fee for each dispensary location, plus an annual fee of $50,000 for each license.
“If 10 people in one county apply, nine of them are going to lose $25,000 just for the opportunity to apply,” said Sen. Russell Ruderman, a Democrat from the Big Island. “That’s just not reasonable.”
The fees were modeled after the state of Connecticut, which had higher fee recommendations, Green said. Fees would go toward the Department of Health’s estimated $750,000 cost to operate the dispensary program, he said.
“If people don’t have adequate economic capacity, they could begin to open up and then go bankrupt and close and then we have to start from scratch,” Green said.
“We really don’t want fly-by-night businesses.”
Previous versions of the bill included as many as 26 dispensaries, but lawmakers pared that down in an effort to start small with a well-regulated system.
