On Friday afternoon, April 8th, the Hawaii Department of Health issued a press release shedding needed light on two key issues of the medical marijuana application process in response to the Hawaii Dispensary Alliance’s request for greater transparency.
- DoH announced that Dr. John Fisher III, the Scientific Director of Keystone Laboratories, and one of the merit criteria panelists who would be evaluating the dispensary applications stepped down from his position on the panel. Neither he nor his scores of the applications will be included in the Department of Health’s decision making process.
- DoH addressed the Hawaii Dispensary Alliance’s own press release requesting more transparency regarding the Department’s late night request on April 7th that every dispensary applicant submit fingerprints for each person related to the application by April 12th. The Department of Health did not change its position on the deadline, nor on the extent of the requirement, but the Department did indicate that if dispensaries are unable to comply in time, that the Department may extend the deadline and push-back the announcement of the licensees past April 15th.
DoH posted this press release to their website after briefly publishing the Hawaii Dispensary Alliance’s own press release requesting such transparency to the same website a few minutes beforehand. The Alliance’s press release can still be found on the DoH website here.
As far as the Alliance is concerned, we appreciate the Department of Health taking the time to issue a statement on both of these issues. We believe that this type of transparency between an industry and the government agency that administers the industry is very important. We hope that this type of dialogue continues into the future to the benefit of both the Department of Health and Hawaii’s medical marijuana industry.
The Hawaii Dispensary Alliance recognizes Dr. John Fisher III and the Department of Health’s fortitude in removing Dr. Fisher from the merit criteria selection panel. While the Department of Health did not reveal the reason for his removal, their actions do provide some credibility to the Department’s attempts to remain impartial in the administration of Hawaii’s medical marijuana program. Dr. Fisher’s opinion will have no effect on the final application decision of the Department, and the Alliance believes it is better that he was removed before problems could arise than for DoH to wait and possibly nullify the selection process as a whole by not removing him.
The Alliance supports as much transparency in the selection process as possible and will continue to advocate for the release of information and application scores as the announcement of the dispensary licensees draws near.
Regarding the fingerprinting issue, you can learn more in the Alliance’s earlier press release that brought this issue to the attention of DoH and the public at large. The Department is not wrong to require fingerprinting and background checks, in fact they are required to by statute and their own administrative rules. The issue is the short time frame given to the applicant’s to comply, just five days (on two of which the fingerprinting locations are closed), and the Department’s own failure to include this requirement in the online dispensary license application that each applicant submitted back in January.
The Alliance believes that the Department of Health’s response provides the Department with quite a bit of leeway in how to treat this issue moving forward, up to and including postponing the announcement of the licensees until the background checks are completed. Whereas we believe that there are additional actions that the Department of Health should take to further mitigate any negative or undue burden that their last minute announcement had on the dispensary applicants; we are grateful for their efforts in addressing this issue so forthrightly.
Potential additional steps that the Department of Health could take include:
- Simply clarifying that only the individual dispensary applicant has to submit fingerprints by April 12th, and set a later date for the rest of the relevant parties to submit fingerprints, conditioning the award of a license on the successful qualification of all involved persons upon the completion of the background checks.
- Requiring each involved person in a dispensary application to submit a signed background check consent form by April 12th, and allowing extra time for the submission of fingerprints, conditioning the award of a license on the successful qualification of all involved persons upon the completion of the background checks.
Both of these solutions rely on the fact that passing the background checks is not a part of the merit criteria the Department of Health is relying on to select the dispensary licensees. Rather the background checks are a pass/fail component of the application. So the Department can go ahead and evaluate the applications on the merits and then eliminate any applications that fail the background check requirement at a later date.
The industry and the dispensary applicants we have talked to are understandably upset by this late requirement and the potential postponement of the licensing announcement beyond April 15th. Continued transparency on the part of the Department of Health with regards to both the background check issue and the announcement deadline will be important if this industry is to launch with a working relationship between the Department of Health and the dispensaries.
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For more information contact:
Christopher H. Garth
Executive Director
Hawai‘i Dispensary Alliance
christopher@hawaiidispensaryalliance.org
Christopher Garth is the Executive Director and chief lobbyist of the Hawai‘i Dispensary Alliance, with almost a decade of experience bridging the gap between stakeholder interests and all levels of Hawai‘i’s state and local governments. A native Hawaiian, educated on the mainland and in Honolulu, Christopher is excited about this opportunity to help a growing industry bring new opportunities to Hawai‘i and greater access to medicine for those in need.
It is the Alliance’s mission to provide up-to-date and relevant industry information to the patients, dispensary applicants, and related businesses of Hawai‘i’s growing medicinal cannabis economy. Contact us today about joining the Alliance and we will send you the most recent edition of our monthly industry publication, the HDA Industry Update, absolutely free to say thank you for your interest! You can also find us on Facebook or Twitter.