Hawaii One Step Closer to Legalizing Sports-Betting and Expanding Gambling Addiction

from Hawaii Family Forum, Thursday, March 13, 2025 

Not surprisingly, the joint Senate Committee of Economic Development & Tourism and the Senate Committee on Commerce & Consumer Protection passed HB1308 HD2 out of committee today with amendments. Once the website is updated with the vote, I will provide it for you.

However, you can watch these three snippets from the questions portion and the decision making.

In this first part, you can watch the representative from DCCA answer questions by both Chair Lynn DeCoite and Senator Donna Mercado Kim. This clip is 7 minutes and 45 seconds long.

In this second clip, you can watch the very interesting question and answer that happened between Senator Glenn Wakai and the representative from the Attorney General's office.  I find it interesting that Senator Wakai thinks we need to legalize gambling to fix the problem of gambling addiction.  (Maybe it would be easier to provide funding to help with addiction rather than creating a whole new law that will create more addicts!)

You have to watch the short clip to see it for yourself. This clip is 4 minutes and 26 seconds.

Finally, here is the full decision making clip which is very short, but you will see the vote and hear any comments by Senators. This clip is 3 minutes and 30 seconds long.

STATUS:  The bill will now move to the Senate Ways & Means Committee.  We will keep you posted.

Mahalo to all of you who took time out to submit testimony in opposition and/or made calls to the Senate offices.

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HB1308: Text, Status