Hawaii Bill To Support Psychedelic Therapy—Passed By Both Senate And House—Is Dead For The Session

A Hawaii bill to support research into psychedelic-assisted therapies that had passed both chambers of the legislature in different forms missed a legislative deadline and is now dead for the session, its sponsor tells Marijuana Moment.

SB 1042, from Sen. Chris Lee (D), was scheduled for a conference committee meeting, with lawmakers from both legislative chambers set to hammer out differences between versions of the bill passed by the House and Senate.

“Unfortunately, we ran out of time was the bottom line,” Lee said in a brief phone interview. “And that happened to a slew of bills, not just this one.”

While the proposal won’t move forward this year, the senator said the conversation this session will set the stage for a renewed effort in 2026.

“The great thing is, we had agreement on the final language in the bill,” Lee said. “So I think picking up next year from there will give us the ability to identify a clear path forward.”

Lawmakers on the House floor voted 44–5 last month to pass the legislation. The Senate had previously approved the proposal in March, but the chamber later rejected amendments made in the House.

For example, the structure of the bill was revised in a House committee to create a two-year pilot program rather than establish the program through a state special fund. Changes also moved the proposed system under the Office of Wellness and Resilience (OWR) rather than the state 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.”

The House-approved pilot program would be funded through a million-dollar annual investment from the legislature, which could be matched in private funds. Overall, that could mean $4 million in total funding over the span of the pilot.

Lee said that next year’s legislation will more closely resemble the House-passed bill, with the program overseen by the OWR and paid for “with a couple of different forms of funding.”

“I’m feeling pretty good about it,” the lawmaker said.

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As defined in the legislation this session, “emerging therapies” referred to psychedelic or entactogenic substances that are either approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or under Hawaii state law as well as compounds undergoing FDA-approved clinical trials.

“Compassionate use,” meanwhile, would mean “treating patients suffering from terminal or life-threatening conditions,” including treatment-resistant mental health conditions.

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.”

A report from a second Senate panel that approved the bill, the Committee on Ways and Means, says that “the special fund established and research supported by this measure will help facilitate patient access to innovative mental health treatments.”

Lawmakers received hundreds of pages of written testimony from state agencies, advocacy groups and interested individuals as the legislation progressed.

OWR, which would be responsible for overseeing the psychedelics research initiative, said the bill “provides an important opportunity to create a pathway for those in need to have access to innovative and potentially life-saving treatments for trauma and mental health challenges, within the context of closely monitored clinical research.”

Veterans advocates, such as the organization Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS), also voiced support for the measure, noting that, while “other states have taken important steps, Hawaii has the opportunity to take the next giant leap in psychedelic leadership.”

“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 lead the way, setting a precedent for the future of psychedelic medicine.”

Meanwhile last week, both chambers of Hawaii’s legislature passed a medical marijuana bill that would, among other changes, allow patients to enroll in the state program for any health condition their treating clinician believes that cannabis would benefit.

HB 302, which was recently revised in a bicameral conference committee, would also allow patients to receive recommend medical cannabis recommendations through telehealth visits rather than having to establish an in-person relationship with a provider.

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.”

At the same time, Green reiterated his support for full recreational legalization.

“I think for adults who can responsibly use marijuana, it should be legal,” he said.

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 (D). Specifically, it will remove a distinction between marijuana and other Schedule V drugs for the purposes of the expungement program.

The bill’s proponents said the current wording of the law forces state officials to comb through thousands of criminal records manually in order to identify which are eligible for expungement under 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).

Had the measure become law, it would have increased the amount of cannabis decriminalized in Hawaii from the current 3 grams up to 15 grams. Possession of any amount of marijuana up to that 15-gram limit would have been classified as a civil violation, punishable by a fine of $130.

A Senate bill that would have legalized marijuana for adults, meanwhile, ultimately stalled for the session. That measure, SB 1613, failed to make it out of committee by 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. Ahead of that hearing, the panels received nearly 300 pages of testimony, including from state agencies, advocacy organizations and members of the 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. Some read the move as a sign the regulatory agency saw a need to prepare to the potential reform.

Hawaii was the first U.S. state to legalize medical marijuana through its legislature, passing a law in 2000.

Areas With Higher Veteran Populations Have More Medical Marijuana Doctors, Federally Funded Study Shows

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Mushroom Observer.

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