Scorecard: House Omnibus Marijuana Package

From Horns of Jericho Blog, February 18, 2015

As a follow-up to the previous Call to Arms, I have received many emails asking about what happened to the bills that the House Committee on Health (HLT) heard a couple of weeks ago.  Here is a list of the bills that were heard by the House Committee on Health – how did your representative vote?

HB321 (Medical Marijuana Dispensaries) – The Health and Judiciary Committees in the House passed the bill through their respective committees after making revisions. Neither the committee report nor the House Draft 1 (amended version of the bill) are available yet. This bill moves to the full House for second reading before it continues to the House Finance Committee. Votes are as follows:

HB321, House Judiciary Committee (JUD)

HB788 (Oversight and regulation of dispensaries, Lessons from Colorado) – HB788 would have fixed all of the flaws in HB321. While it would not stop the inevitable launch of medical marijuana dispensaries, it would have ensured that Hawaii would not repeat the same mistakes as Colorado in the implementation of their dispensary system. This bill was deferred and is currently ‘dead’. [1]

HB1455 (Increases possession limits for medical marijuana users) – This bill has been amended to only increase the number of plants users are allowed to possess. While a more detailed analysis will be done in a future post, this still effectively increases the number of plants a patient can have from seven to fourteen. This bill has passed through the House Committee on Health and passed second reading by the full House of Representatives.

HB1455, House Committee on Health (HLT)

HB1455, Second Reading

Amongst the “yays” and “nays” of second reading, it is worth noting that Fukumoto Chang specifically voiced her “strong support” for HB1455.

HB794 (Doctor-determination of medical marijuana ailments) – This bill would have allowed individual doctors to determine the range of ailments that medical marijuana could be prescribed for. Currently, the Legislature and Department of Health maintain a list of ailments that medical marijuana can be prescribed for to prevent overprescription of marijuana for relatively minor ailments (e.g. paper cuts, etc.). This bill was deferred and is currently ‘dead’.

HB795 (Marijuana testing in the workplace) – This bill would stop employees from being disciplined for testing positive for marijuana, purely on the basis of testing positive. This would make drug testing against medical users of marijuana ineffective and would create a range of safety and health problems in many work sectors. This bill was deferred and is currently ‘dead’.

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[1] While rules and deadlines dictate that a bill is dead, there are mechanisms that can bring these bills back to life. Nothing is truly over until the Legislature concludes for the year.

[2] A vote of “W/R” is a yes vote with reservations. This normally indicates that the representative has some issues with the bill but at least agree with the overarching intent. This alone is the subject of an entire post in the future.

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Scorecard: Senate Omnibus Marijuana Package

Blogger’s Note: Since the previous scorecard post went up regarding marijuana bills in the House, HB1455 died in the House Consumer Protection (CPC) committee. The only marijuana bill alive in the House is HB321.

From Horns of Jericho Blog, February 19, 2015

Despite hearing the same exact testimony on nearly identical measures, much more controversial bills in the Senate breezed through their committees. Amongst the measures advancing are two bills to legalize marijuana via different mechanisms. Of the legislation being tracked from Wednesday’s hearings, only SB228 (Expanding the definition of marijuana to include concentrated derivatives) did not advance.

While advancing bills were amended from their original form, the specific changes will not be known until the committee reports are posted online.

For more detailed descriptions than the short titles listed below, please visit our 2015 Legislation Tracker.

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