the latest chapter of No Dispensary For You

[Chunkster]

Some very well connected people paid a lot of money to get those marijuana dispensary permits. They are not going to let the politicians whom they bought undermine their investment and near monopoly by legalizing recreational use.

[kalakoa]

Is recreational marijuana going to ever come up for a vote here?

Irrelevant.

Hawaii County passed a referendum to decriminalize marijuana; County and State decided it was "not enforceable due to Federal pre-emption".

Assuming recreational marijuana legislation made it to the governor's desk, he would simply veto it.

very well connected people paid a lot of money to get those marijuana dispensary permits

How's that working out for them? They would probably support recreational sales if their existing licenses were extended to allow this.

That said ... if the restrictions/requirements were anything like those written for medical marijuana, nobody would participate in the recreational program. The upside of a black market is that your purchases are relatively anonymous.

[Chunkster]

Not that anyone (but me) will remember come next election, but Puna Representative Joy Sanbuenaventura was so deeply involved in writing the legal language for the Medical Marijuana legislation that she failed to notice that there was a dengue fever outbreak in her district. There's some priceless video of a breathtakingly ignorant Sanbuenaventura's response when asked about dengue at a meeting in Pahoa.

[kalakoa]

The latest / more of the same:

http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/news...tage-grows

They have amazingly detailed statistics about the patients, age distribition, island of residence, medical reason, etc. Impressive, considering it's all "illegal under Federal law".

http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/news/loca...a-industry

More hand-wringing about "nobody realizes how hard it is to build this industry from scratch." As if Hawaii was the first state ever to attempt such a thing.

"This process really needs to be expedited because patients do have an alternative, which is the black and gray market. It's important to find a balance between costs and time and excessive regulation."

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

The Rohrabacher-Farr amendment blocks the Justice Department from interfering with state medical marijuana laws. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions had asked that it be allowed to expire, giving the federal government the power to once again ramp up the "war on drugs."

It looks like that won't happen, which is good news for Hawaii's dispensaries:

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the rider, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, by a voice vote, indicating that it was not controversial among the panel's members, who include 16 Republicans. The committee thereby rejected a personal plea by Sessions to let the amendment lapse.
http://boingboing.net/2017/07/27/senate-...otect.html

Four people are in a room and seven leave. How many have to enter again before it's empty?

[kalakoa]

Recent issue of PBN suggests that a testing lab might be certified soon -- details vague as usual, but it looks like the first possibly-to-open dispensary will be on a different island than the first might-get-certified lab, thereby immediately forcing the "transportation through Federal Enclave" issue.