Editor's Note: While it's great news that Hawaii is on a path to making medical marijuana available to thousands of patients, 14 years of "prolonged legislative inaction" is just simply unacceptable.Â
For the past 14 years, Hawaii has legally enjoyed the privilege of having legal medicinal marijuana. Unfortunately, the law enacted in 2000 fails to provide a legal mechanism for purchasing needs-the obvious first step in a growing operation. This has left tens of thousands of patients in need, and to make the choice to either grow their own plants or purchase them illegally. In fact, this situation was cited by acting state auditor Jan K. Yamane, in a recentaudit by the Hawaii Medical Marijuana Dispensary Task Force. Fittingly, this task force was designed to “develop recommendations for the establishment of a regulated statewide dispensary system for medical marijuana”.  The non-existent kush clouds have a silver lining in that progress is being made. The task force has made several promising recommendations about how Hawaii can ensure that its thousands of marijuana patients can access their medicine.
