 This is Stink Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, I'm Marcia Joyner and this is Cannabis Chronicles. We are on a 10,000 year odyssey. Cannabis is nothing new. So tell me news of that plant of many resources which wondered far and wide the ancient plant of food, fuel, and fiber cultivated for millennia. Historically it was used, the raw plant was used for food more than 34 million years ago. And so now here we are today trying to figure out what to do, what not to do. It's an unbelievable state that we're in, state of affairs. And thus our odyssey begins with where we are today. As we venture through this past 10,000 years we will explore and discover the plant which cannabis derives. The many uses of the plant, hemp, cannabis, ashes, cannabis and religion, cannabis and medicine, cannabis and uncle Sam, oh dear. So as you know the cannabis industry in Hawaii is growing by leaps and bounds. In 2015 the Dispensary Program licensed eight dispensaries and they are doing great. And now I understand that the state of Hawaii issues about 1200 cards a month. And so here we are with all of these people with license to go to the dispensary and buy medical cannabis. They are allowed to grow plants, medical cannabis. So now we have and we're also licensed in the state of Hawaii to buy a gun. So now today here we are bumping heads with the two, medical cannabis and guns. And we're the first state. So I have asked my guest, Wendy Gibson, who is an expert in the field of medical cannabis. She has been with the project since 2000, 2000 as we have ventured into making this whole thing legal. She is a nurse that knows all, you can't believe. Don't say all. There's so much more that they don't know than they do. Wait but my experience with Wendy is just learning all of this is just overwhelming. But let's talk about, my favorite, what is it, guns and medical cannabis. That's today. Today we have a new wrinkle. Why is it that if cannabis, medical cannabis is legal, guns are legal, so why are we here? What happened? This all kind of, this kerfuffle really came to a boiling point last week when 20, 30 patients reported that they had received letters from the Honolulu police department informing them that they had 30 days to turn in their guns and ammunition because it is illegal for cannabis patients to own guns or ammunition because the federal laws say that anyone who uses cannabis might be prone to mental instability and so therefore they cannot own guns and so it's in the law that they cannot. The question is, do they do that to alcoholics? They don't do that for psychoactive drugs which has been the cause of mass shootings and yeah, not for opiates either, no, much more dangerous drugs. Much more dangerous. Opiates are killing themselves, come on. That's because of the controlled substance act of 1970 which squarely places cannabis in a schedule one drug category, those having no medical use whatsoever and the most dangerous drugs on the planet. The state of Hawaii though has declared that there is a medical use. So the state recognizes it to a certain degree and when it comes to conflict with federal laws that's where our old outdated policies need to be looked at and updated because they're really horrible, horribly outdated. So the attorney general, Doug Chen, said he understood all of that and he also understood his own personal bias and he was going to put that aside. He sat right where you are and said that and he understood about states rights and so for him he wasn't quite sure where to go with this issue but he did say that he understood states rights and he understood his personal bias because he said that he grew up at a time when they taught him that marijuana was a gateway drug. So he never tried it because his parents told him not to. We've all been told my entire life that it's the most highly dangerous thing that's going to cause severe addiction and brain damage and drop out of school and you'll never have a job. So he said he understood his bias but he understood also all of these issues so I thought that was promising when he said when he admitted his own bias. I'm hopeful that we're looking at some serious change and fairly soon the police commission is going to be meeting today to address this because in the past this just wasn't an issue for them they weren't really aware that this was a problem. It's been happening over the years. Patients have been receiving notices these letters but it was just more recently there was a change in some wording on the application for the permits which asked are you using any illegal substances including marijuana and then they clarified that to say that by federal law no use is legal so they don't recognize medical use. So that puts our police department in in kind of a bind. They are trying to enforce state law but they are sort of also being forced to enforce federal law. Well okay now honestly if you're filling out an application and it says that yes you you check it to be sure that you're because you don't want to be charged with fraud. No you have to answer the question. So you'd answer the question. However if you already have a gun for the last however many years you've been hunting with guns and all this kind of stuff then now in the last month you get your cannabis card how is it they know this that's one thing if you fill out the application and you say yes I'm taking but now I've been hunting with this gun for years now I get the cannabis card and I have to turn in my gun. Well the police have backed off from that there's nothing in the law that says they have to confiscate the guns. What they were attempting to do was to try to match up names using the Department of Health database compared to the application forms. That's our understanding of what they were trying to do. And the database the state allows people to look at the database. Not freely the Department of Health does covet the privacy of patient information but there are exclusions for police business and it was set up so that police have 24 7 access on a need to know basis to find out whether or not a patient is valid or not and the Department of Health comes back with an answer of yes or no or maybe it's an expired card but they don't freely give out patient information and only a few of the law enforcement officers are allowed access to this database. That still bothers me. Yes that was probably what raised the most alarms is that you know not just there's this fear of government trying to take away guns but of law enforcement having complete access to all the patient registry and they don't. They don't and look on the Department of Health's website and they came out with a statement I think was yesterday explaining what kind of access is allowed and it's on a need to know basis. But we had hoped that it would only be for registry purposes but we never expected that it would be extended to gun ownership. That bothers me because now I don't have a card or a gun. However I do know people that have been hunting forever while war. They have guns. And that bothers me to think that here they've been hunting some of them forever. And now there's this issue. It's never been an issue before. And now you're a criminal again and you're mentally incompetent to handle a gun or ammunition or even ham ammunition. So yeah it's raising a lot of questions absolutely on what needs to be done, which policies need to be fixed and the police commission will be addressing that today at 2 o'clock. We'll know more tomorrow. It's just one of their agenda items. But I'm also hopeful just because we have a new police chief who has looked at this and made some very good statements. I was going to read her statement. This is a new area of concern for cities across the country and we in Honolulu want to develop a policy that's legally sound and serves our community, HPD Chief Susan Ballard. So I believe that she understands that this war on drugs and the whole reefer madness era needs to be over. That we need to look at creating sensible drug policies and especially with something like this. It's based on no science whatsoever. We don't know what these conclusions were based on anything except reefer madness. Yes of course. And if you pick up a young person on the sidewalk in Waikiki and he's got an ounce or a quarter of an ounce of marijuana, he goes to jail, he's branded for life and yet we have people like our president who has committed lots of crimes and he gets elected. This is just so wrong. So wrong, wrong, wrong. Anyway you look at it. Privilege of all different sorts. Yes. So I, whoa, what was that? Sorry. Oh. I dropped something. Oh. Pardon me. Oh I thought maybe they had come for us. No. That's right. Your statement. Watch out. Did I say something wrong? Well there are many things that we need to do though to move forward with this and one of them is to get cannabis out of a schedule one drug category. And there is, Congress is working on that. There's a bill, it's HR 2020 that would do just that and there's a huge backing from the American Legion who would like to have veterans gain access to this medicine for PTSD. They would also like to see research being opened up. So they are backing this, this bill. We have to take a break and we will be back in a minute. Don't go away. This is Stink Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Stink Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. I'm Carol Mon Lee, Stink Tech Hawaii's Volunteer Chief Operating Officer and occasional host and this is Niki. For the first time, Stink Tech Hawaii is participating in an online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. 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So is it there that they don't want to let go? Is that where it gives them the authority to do this? Do they feel that? I don't know, I'm asking. What you're asking is do they still feel like an ownership of it and need to be monitoring it so very closely? I can't speak for them possible, but we got it transferred over to the Department of Health because we wanted to maintain better patient confidentiality and they understand medical issues so it's the most appropriate department for it to be in. And so that's part of why everybody was so aghast that the police department had been given this information and people wondered how freely they were being given this information. And we still don't know entirely, but our understanding is it was just patients who had filled out permit application forms. But I'm hearing now that there is at least one patient who said no that they did not do that. Yeah, well the article says they were confiscating. So I don't know maybe I misread, but it sounded to me like they were confiscating from people that had already had, like I said, about farmers and guns and people with years and years of ownership. Well, I believe occasionally when law enforcement has been doing compliance checks, I believe if they find guns they will confiscate them. What do you mean a compliance check? Well, law enforcement has been doing compliance checks and showing up at patients' homes to check their patient, their plant count and to check to make sure that they are labeled correctly. So if I'm growing, if I get the 10 plants that the law allows and I'm growing it at home, they can come in and take a look, is that what you mean by compliance? Well, they're not supposed to just show up, however we do have reports of that happening on Maui and on the Big Island. I don't believe it's happened on Oahu. And we need to look into that further to find out more of the details. I don't want to start spreading rumors about, you know, because I don't have all the details. I just imagine that it would be so difficult to grow 10 plants in a small space and usually on Oahu most people have small space. Sure. Yeah. Well, law enforcement has said that the only reason that they showed up was because they received a complaint of some sort about a smell or that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, again, the rules of living in condominiums are no smoking at all. Any kind of smoking. Yeah. They either have a hard time trying to figure out how to do this because, yeah, they want to go down and smoke in their car or have to drive somewhere and, you know, have to tell them, no, don't smoke and drive. Yes. Don't smoke in your car. It's just, yeah. Yeah. There's so many rules. But this patient population has less rights than any other patient population already. So we are working, the Drug Policy Forum has been working on giving patients back some of these rights and, like, to keep your job. Yeah. It would be a nice one. Whatever would be a nice one, yes. But you can see Hawaii's drug laws that we do, the Drug Policy Forum has created a booklet and it's for healthcare professionals, for patients, for caregivers, or anybody who wants to know Hawaii's laws. And that's on our website at Drug Policy Forum of Hawaii. It's dpfhi.org. And in there, there is the question about gun ownership. It's brief. But we will try to keep you up to date if you subscribe to our newsletters or you watch the website. We'll try to keep you up to date with what we're discovering about the policies that the police feel that they need to continue to enforce and which ones they want to change. And then also legislation that we're going to be introducing during the legislative session to try to get it out of the Schedule 1 drug category on a state level just for solidifying that we recognize, that the state does recognize a medical use for it. So to get it, this is just the state. So do you have a bill before the legislature? Not yet. Session starts January 17th. But they're already piling up bills. So what can we do as watchers of cannabis chronicles? How can we support your bill? What do you want us to do? Well, if they subscribe to our newsletter, we'll send out a list of the bills that we're supporting, a little description of them, and talking points if they want to write letters about it, how to access the state capitals website so that they can go in and click on buttons that say, I support or I do not support. You know, we try to keep it easy. But it's really best if people submit their opinions in writing. And so they need to go to the state capitals website and create an account in order to do that. So if we create a cannabis chronicles cadre, I talk to Terry Heady about just the same thing. We need to come together so that they understand this. And I'm not a user, but I want the right for other people that the medical, I want that unencumbered. I want them to, because from all that I've read, all the people that have been on our show, that it is really a great way to heal for other ailments. So I come from a long line of being totally active in so many issues. This to me is just one of those issues, and I want people to have that right. If you feel that this will cure whatever it is, PTSD, arthritis, whatever, I don't know. We need to have that. You need to be able to do that. Well I created an educational program to teach other healthcare professionals about how the medicine works, about the chemistry of the plant and our own body chemistry and how they work together, so that healthcare providers, the doctors, the osteopaths, and the APRNs will feel more comfortable in making those recommendations and helping patients use their medicine. So we need more education, absolutely. There are also patient support groups that have been forming all over the place, and you could attend meetings of those. One of those recently formed, I can't remember the name exactly, but I think it's Hawaii Medical Cannabis Patients or Cannabis Rights Group, something like that. That's what we need. But if you contact me at the Medical Cannabis Coalition, I'll give you more information. That's what we need for people to have the rights. That's all I want. Is that you're comfortable, you feel free, you feel safe with doing this. Something that's 10,000 years old should not be. It's been used medicinally for at least 5 to 10,000 years. In my 30 years of working in healthcare, I've discovered that this is the safest and pretty darn effective medicine for most of the patients who are using it. And it's one of the only medications that doesn't carry the side effect of death alongside with it. And so I want people to understand, yes, like any medication, it can have side effects, but if you understand what those side effects are, you can anticipate it, you can treat it, and the side effects are not insanity, because like our laws seem to assume. Yeah, well, that's what I want. I want, yes, the support organizations, so we want to make sure that everybody has the right to do this and feel safe. They don't feel like the police is going to come knocking at the door. Or that you're going to go to jail for an ounce of cannabis. That's just so wrong. The jail's a full of young people with one ounce of marijuana. And we do want to encourage patients to follow the law and register, and not have to choose between registering for a gun and registering for your medicines. Or have to give up one for the other. Okay, so we want you to contact Wendy, contact me, whichever both, because we need to make sure that this bill passes, that people are safe with medical marijuana. I agree. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time. Thank you, Marsha Rose. Aloha. Aloha.