Two Hawaii Senate committees on Thursday superior a bill to legalize hashish for grownup use, KHON2 stories. The measure handed out of the Well being and Human Providers Committee 2-1 with two excused, and out of the Commerce and Client Safety Committee 3-1 with one excused.
The measure would enable retail gross sales to adults 21-and-older and impose a tax on these gross sales. Medical hashish gross sales could be exempt from the hashish excise tax. The laws would additionally create the Hawaii Hashish Authority and regulators must undertake business guidelines by Dec. 1, 2024, start the appliance course of by Jan. 31, 2025, and challenge licenses by Mar. 30, 2025.
Beneath the measure, adults could be allowed to legally possess as much as 4 ounces of hashish.
Sen. Pleasure San Buenaventura (D), chair of the Well being and Human Providers Committee, mentioned the reforms would “result in not only a triumph for particular person liberties and reform of the legal justice system, however it might additionally create prospects for contemporary sources of earnings and financial development within the state.”
Sen. Brenton Awa (R), a member of the well being committee, voted “sure” however “with reservations” on account of his concern about excessive dispensary costs and the invoice allegedly favoring business growers over small farms.
“The dispensaries are the issue. You go right into a dispensary, I don’t know who might afford it,” Awa mentioned throughout his remarks, in response to a Honolulu Civil Beat report. “To me once you legalize marijuana – if I obtained to farm, and I’m a grower, I ought to have the ability to promote marijuana. Not, I obtained to go to a dispensary, get a allow and take care of all these things.”
The measure strikes subsequent to the chamber’s Judiciary Committee and Methods and Means Committee.
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