After repeated failed attempts to broadly legalize adult-use cannabis, Hawaii’s best shot in 2026 appears to be a bill that would enact incremental reform for consumers but not licensed businesses.
The Hawaii Senate Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee unanimously advanced legislation on Feb. 18 that would legalize low-dose and low-potency cannabis for personal use for those 21 and older beginning Jan. 1, 2027.
While the legislation, Senate Bill 3275, defines “low-dose and low-potency” cannabis as containing no more than 5 milligrams of THC per serving, including per 12 ounces in liquid form, the bill would not establish a licensed and regulated program for businesses to commercially cultivate, manufacture and sell tested products to adult-use customers.
Instead, it would allow anyone 21 or older to “dispense or otherwise sell” low-dose and low-potency cannabis to any other person who is at least 21 years old, and for those persons to “smoke, ingest or consume” the cannabis, according to the bill.
But the bill’s wording suggests that unlicensed businesses could sell cannabis, too.
Sponsored by Democratic Sen. Joy San Buenaventura, the legislation requires that low-dose and low-potency cannabis “dispensed by a business” to be stored in sealed, child-resistant and resealable packaging with original labels and not easily accessible to anyone under 21.
The bill would also require that low-dose and low-potency cannabis cultivated for personal adult use be stored in a manner that is not easily accessible to any person under 21; however, the Senate HHS Committee amended the bill on Wednesday to remove certain provisions allowing adults to cultivate cannabis at home.
Specifically, the emended version refrained from adopting allowances for how many plants adults could grow at home and how much harvested cannabis from those plants they could process and store.
Instead, the Office of Medical Cannabis Control and Regulation would be responsible for adopting rules to establish requirements and restrictions for personal cultivation, “including manners in which the low-dose and low-potency cannabis plant may be cultivated or processed into low-dose and low-potency cannabis and low-dose and low-potency cannabis products and further restrictions necessary to ensure that the personal cultivation of low-dose and low-potency cannabis plants is not utilized for illicit activity.”
The committee also amended the bill to remove protections for adult-use cannabis consumers related to medical care, including their potential disqualifications for organ and tissue transplants for using an illicit substance.
In addition, the amended bill stripped protections for custody and visitation rights for parents who use adult-use cannabis, as well as protections for workers from being disciplined or losing their benefits for positive drug tests.
This incremental reform package comes after the Hawaii Senate passed broad adult-use cannabis legalization bills in 2023 and 2024, only to have the Hawaii House block those proposals.
In 2025, the Hawaii House continued its legalization blockade when, after a bill that originated in that chamber survived two committees, Democratic Rep. Chris Todd introduced a rare motion on the floor that prevented debate and recommitted the bill until 2026.
“On this particular bill, it became clear that we did not have enough support to pass the measure in this session,” he said last February.
That same storyline has unfolded in the House again this year, with the chamber neglecting to take up a pair of adult-use legalization bills, including one that would have left the choice up to Hawaii voters in the November 2026 election.
Although Hawaii is one of the 24 states that do not provide for citizen-initiated ballot measures, Hawaii’s Legislature can refer constitutional amendments to the Aloha State’s voters.
But rather than let the electorate decide, Hawaii’s House members did not take up that bill this session because they didn’t have the votes for it to pass, Democratic House Speaker Nadine Nakamura told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser earlier this month.
“We represent 1.4 million people,” she said. “The constituencies are so different, and they have to represent their constituencies.”
But the House’s representation doesn’t appear to match its constituency.
Hawaiian voters want adult-use cannabis legalized, an issue that 58% of the state’s adults support, according to a late 2023 Hawai’i Perspectives poll conducted by Pacific Resource Partnership.
“The feedback we were getting from members is that this doesn’t rise to the level of a constitutional amendment where we’re changing the way government operates,” Nakamura told the Star-Advertiser. “This is more of an issue that should be addressed within the body.”
The problem is that the body hasn’t addressed the issue in 26 years.
Once one of the most progressive states in the nation on cannabis reform, Hawaii was the first state to legalize medical cannabis legislatively in 2000. Today, it remains the oldest medical-only state in the nation by 13 years over New Hampshire.
In addition, Hawaii is the last remaining state in the U.S. without adult-use legalization under a Democratic-controlled Legislature and governorship.
With broad legalization still a red light in the Hawaii House, perhaps the Senate’s low-dose, low-potency proposal could buck the trend.
