Hawaii’s bill supporting research on psychedelic assisted therapies, which had been passed by both chambers in the Legislature under different names and forms has now missed a deadline for this session. Its sponsor told MEDCAN24 that the legislation is dead.
SB 1042 from Sen. Chris Lee, (D), is scheduled to be discussed in a meeting of the conference committee, where lawmakers from the House and Senate will try to resolve differences that exist between the versions of this bill.
Lee told a reporter in a phone interview that they had run out of time. It happened on a lot of bills and not just the one in question.
Although the proposal is not likely to be moved forward in this session, Senators said that the conversations this time will help set the tone for renewed efforts in 2026.
Lee stated that “the great thing was, we were able to agree on the final wording of the bill.” Next year, I believe we will be able to find a path that is clear.
Lawmakers on the House floor voted 44–5 last month to pass the legislation. Senate previously passed the legislation in March. However, the House rejected any amendments.
A House committee, for instance, revised the bill’s structure to include a 2-year pilot program instead of establishing a program using a state-specific fund. The system proposed was also moved under the Office of Wellness and Resilience instead of the Department of Health.
As approved by the Senate last month, by contrast, the proposal would establish a state “mental health emerging therapies special fund,” which could be used to subsidize clinical trials, establish public-private research partnerships and eventually develop state programs around patient access for “compassionate use.”
A pilot program approved by the House would be funded with a one-million-dollar investment each year from the Legislature, and could also be matched through private funding. This could total $4 million over the duration of the project.
Lee explained that, next year, the bill will be similar to what was passed by the House. It would include a program that is overseen by OWR with funding coming from “a variety of sources.”
The lawmaker expressed his satisfaction by saying, “I feel pretty good about this.”
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According to the definition in this legislation, emerging therapies are substances such as entactogenic or psychedelic drugs that have been approved either by the FDA or Hawaii State law or those that undergo FDA-approved trials.
Compassionate usage would refer to “treating those suffering from life-threatening or terminal conditions” including mental disorders that are resistant to treatment.
Though the bill doesn’t list specific conditions, a report from the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which previously advanced the plan, mentions depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and PTSD as “widespread and affecting millions worldwide and many in the State’s community.”
According to a report of a Senate committee that also approved the measure, the Committee on Ways and Means (CWM), “the research and special fund that will be established by this bill and supported through it will assist patients in accessing innovative mental healthcare treatments.”
As legislation moved forward, legislators received hundreds pages of written testimonials from state agencies and advocacy groups as well as interested individuals.
OWR will be in charge of overseeing the research on psychedelics. The bill, according to OWR “provides a significant opportunity to provide innovative treatments that could potentially save lives for those with mental illness and trauma, all within a context of carefully monitored clinical research.”
Veterans’ advocates such as Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions VETS, have also expressed their support.
“This would be a bold initiative—one that ensures veterans can access these therapies now while also contributing to the broader national conversation on how to best integrate psychedelic treatments into our healthcare system,” the group testified at a previous hearing. Hawaii could set a precedent in the future of psychedelic medicines.
Both chambers of the Hawaii legislature approved a medical cannabis bill last week. The law would permit patients, in addition to other modifications, to sign up for the program if their clinicians believe that marijuana would be beneficial.
HB 302, recently revised by a bicameral committee of conference, allows patients to get medical cannabis recommendations via telehealth instead of having to meet with a doctor in person.
Advocates say a conference amendment mandating that only “primary treating medical providers” could recommend marijuana—combined with others made in the conference committee that would establish a new felony charge for unlicensed dispensary operation and give the state Department of Health sweeping authority to review patients’ medical records—led them to reconsider their stance on the bill.
The move to allow healthcare providers to recommend medical cannabis to patients for any condition they see fit is in line with a plan announced last year by Gov. Josh Green (D) to expand access to marijuana in light of the legislature’s failure to pass recreational legalization measures.
“This would make it very available—that’s marijuana—for those who choose it in their lives,” the governor said in an interview, “and it would still keep kids safe, which has been everyone’s priority.”
Green also reiterated that he supports the full legalization of recreational marijuana.
He said: “I believe that marijuana should be legal for adults who are able to use it responsibly.”
Lawmakers also recently sent a bill to the governor that would help speed the expungement process for people hoping to clear their records of past marijuana-related offenses—a proposal Green signed into law earlier this month.
That measure, HB 132, from Rep. David Tarnas (D), is intended to expedite expungements happening through a pilot program signed into law last year by Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat. It will specifically remove the distinction between marijuana, and other Schedule V substances for purposes of the program.
Proponents of the bill said that under current law, state officials are forced to search through thousands of criminal files manually to find those eligible for expulsion as part of the pilot program.
Hawaii’s Senate back in February narrowly defeated a separate proposal that would have increased fivefold the amount of cannabis that a person could possess without risk of criminal charges. The body voted 12–11 against the decriminalization measure, SB 319, from Sen. Joy San Buenaventura (D).
The amount of cannabis that is decriminalized on Hawaii would be increased to 15 g if the law had been passed. The possession of up to 15 grams of marijuana would be considered a civil offense punishable with a $130 fine.
Senate Bill 1613, which would have allowed marijuana use by adults to be legalized, was subsequently stalled. SB 1613 was unable to get out of committee in time for a legislative deadline.
While advocates felt there was sufficient support for the legalization proposal in the Senate, it’s widely believed that House lawmakers would have ultimately scuttled the measure, as they did last month with a legalization companion bill, HB 1246.
Last session, a Senate-passed legalization bill also fizzled out in the House.
This year’s House vote to stall the bill came just days after approval from a pair of committees at a joint hearing. The panels had received almost 300 pages of testimonies from various state agencies, advocacy groups and the general public.
This past fall, regulators solicited proposals to assess the state’s current medical marijuana program—and also sought to estimate demand for recreational sales if the state eventually moves forward with adult-use legalization. Others interpreted the move to be a signal that regulators needed to get ready for the reform.
Hawaii passed a law legalizing medical marijuana in its state legislature. This was done by the Hawaii State Legislature.
Federally-funded study finds that in areas where there are more veterans, medical marijuana physicians are also more numerous.
Image courtesy Wikimedia/Mushroom observer.
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