Pubdate: Fri, 08 May 2015
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2015 Star Advertiser
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Authors: Kevin Dayton and Marcel Honore

POT SITES IN PIPELINE

Lawmakers OK a Bill That Provides for 16 Dispensaries, With Some 
Predicting a Look at Full Legalization Later On

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 fullblown 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-MolokaiLanai) 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, MoiliiliMakiki-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-WaiehuWailuku) 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."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom