Hawaii lawmakers have approved a bill to allow patients to immediately access medical cannabis once their registrations are submitted, instead of having to wait until their cards are delivered as is the case under current law.
At a joint hearing of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and Commerce and Consumer Protections Committee on Wednesday, members approved the legislation from Sen. Angus McKelvey (D), with an amendment lowering the one-time purchase limit to one ounce of cannabis instead of the two ounces that would have been covered by the measure as introduced.
Sen. Joy San Buenaventura (D), chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, said at the hearing that she believes regulators are equipped to track those interim sales “using administrative rules as required,” and she said her support it partly informed by personal experience.
The chairwoman said SB 3315 could have helped her family as they supported a terminally ill relative, “where we tried every possible prescriptive ability” and “really needed that one-time use.”
“So for those reasons, I’m going to be passing [the bill] with amendments” to reduce the purchase limit from two ounces to one ounce.
The measure’s approval comes as legislators also weigh proposals to legalize marijuana in the state, with action expected imminently.
Historically, it’s been the Hawaii Senate that’s proved more amenable to cannabis reform in the legislature—and the 2026 session hasn’t been any different so far.
That was evidenced, in part, after key House lawmakers announced earlier this month that a pair of legalization bills that originated in the chamber were effectively dead for the year.
Despite renewed hopes that the proposals—including one from House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee Chairman David Tarnas (D) that would have put the issue of legalization before voters at the ballot—would advance this year, the sponsor and House Speaker Nadine Nakamura (D) said there wasn’t enough support within the legislature to pass them this round.
State officials last month released a report on the potential economic impact of recreational marijuana legalization in the state, including revenue implications related to domestic and international tourism.
All told, researchers said survey data and comparative analyses indicate that Hawaii could see anywhere from $46-$90 million in monthly marijuana sales by year five of implementation, after accounting for a maximum 15 percent tax rate on cannabis products.
Hawaii’s Senate last year narrowly defeated a proposal that would have increased fivefold the amount of cannabis that a person could possess without risk of criminal charges.
Had the measure become law, it would have increased the amount of cannabis decriminalized in Hawaii from the current 3 grams up to 15 grams. Possession of any amount of marijuana up to that 15-gram limit would have been classified as a civil violation, punishable by a fine of $130.
A Senate bill that would have legalized marijuana for adults, meanwhile, ultimately stalled for the session. That measure, SB 1613, failed to make it out of committee by a legislative deadline.
While advocates felt there was sufficient support for the legalization proposal in the Senate, it’s widely believed that House lawmakers would have ultimately scuttled the measure, as they did last February with a legalization companion bill, HB 1246.
In 2024, a Senate-passed legalization bill also fizzled out in the House.
Last year’s House vote to stall the bill came just days after approval from a pair of committees at a joint hearing. Ahead of that hearing, the panels received nearly 300 pages of testimony, including from state agencies, advocacy organizations and members of the public.
Gov. Josh Green (D) signed separate legislation last year to allow medical marijuana caregivers to grow marijuana on behalf of up to five patients rather than the current one.
And in July, the governor signed another bill that establishes a number of new rules around hemp products in Hawaii, including a requirement that distributors and retailers obtain a registration from the Department of Health.
Lawmakers also sent a bill to the governor that would help speed the expungement process for people hoping to clear their records of past marijuana-related offenses—a proposal Green signed into law last April.
That measure, HB 132, from Tarnas, is intended to expedite expungements happening through a pilot program signed into law in 2024 by Green. Specifically, it will remove a distinction between marijuana and other Schedule V drugs for the purposes of the expungement program.
The bill’s proponents said the current wording of the law forces state officials to comb through thousands of criminal records manually in order to identify which are eligible for expungement under the pilot program.
Meanwhile, in November, Hawaii officials finalized rules that will allow medical marijuana dispensaries to sell an expanded assortment of products for patients—including dry herb vaporizers, rolling papers and grinders—while revising the state code to clarify that cannabis oils and concentrates can be marketed for inhalation.
The department also affirmed its support for federal marijuana rescheduling—a policy change that President Donald Trump ordered to be completed expeditiously but has yet to come to fruition.
Hawaii lawmakers recently advanced a bill to allow qualifying patients to access medical marijuana at health facilities.
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Regulators are also launching a series of courses designed to educate physicians and other healthcare professionals about medical marijuana as the state’s cannabis proagram expands.
The underlying medical marijuana expansion bill signed by the governor in late June, in addition to allowing more patients to more easily access cannabis, also contains a provision that advocates find problematic.
Before lawmakers sent the legislation to Green, a conference committee revised the plan, inserting a provision to allow DOH to access medical marijuana patient records held by doctors for any reason whatsoever.
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