HONOLULU — The Hawaii Senate has approved a bill to establish a system of me
Hawaii is one step closer to establishing a system of medical marijuana dispensaries nearly 15 years after the drug became legal in the state.
The state Senate passed a bill approving medical marijuana dispensaries on Tuesday. The next step is for senators and their colleagues in the House to work out their disagreements over how it should work.
For more than a decade, an estimated 13,000 patients approved to use the drug in Hawaii have generally 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 inter-island on planes would be problematic. Earlier versions of the bill stated that counties could not opt out of the dispensary system, but the current version leaves open the possibility that a county could say no to opening a dispensary.
Senators disagreed over 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 had 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 run 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 had included as many as 26 dispensaries, but lawmakers pared that down in an effort to smart small with a well-regulated system.
The effective date of the bill is not yet determined, but dispensaries would open up 180 days after the law went into effect.
Meanwhile, the House passed SB 682, a proposal to develop a dispensary system with more locations and lower dispensary fees than what’s proposed in the House bill.
The medical marijuana dispensaries bill is one of hundreds of proposals the Hawaii Legislature passed ahead of a deadline.
dical marijuana dispensaries nearly 15 years after the drug became legal in the state.
The Senate passed the bill Tuesday. The next step is for senators and their colleagues in the House to work out their disagreements on how it should work.
There are about 13,000 patients who use the drug in Hawaii. They’re generally left to buy it on the black market or grow it on their own.
The current bill would allow up to one dispensary license to be granted in each county. Each license would cover up to one cultivation site and two dispensing locations.
The medical marijuana dispensaries bill is one of dozens of proposals the Hawaii Legislature is passing ahead of a deadline.