DOH FOIA Reveal: The State Is Rewriting History to Destroy Our Businesses
Internal DOH emails reveal attempts to discredit Hawaii hemp businesses, rewrite cannabis enforcement history, and justify Act 269’s devastating impact on local jobs
For the past few months, I have been fighting to save my business and the jobs of my employees. I went to the press to explain that Act 269 would wipe out 80% of our inventory and force us to close our doors. I spoke the truth about the economic devastation facing our local hemp industry.
Thanks to committed citizens and upright, honest individuals, the internal emails from the Department of Health (DOH), have now let me know what they were saying behind my back.
Instead of addressing the economic crisis they created, DOH leadership—from Program Managers to Directors—spent their time drafting “correction letters” to the media to discredit me. Their narrative? That our products have “never been legal” and that essentially, I and all other hemp retailers have no right to complain because our business was supposedly built on non-compliance.
This is gaslighting, pure and simple. And we need to call it out.
1. The “Passive Permission” Trap
The DOH claims in their internal emails that hemp flower, pre-rolls, and vapes were “prohibited prior to Act 269”.
If these products were always illegal, why did the state allow us to open storefronts on main streets in Waikiki? Why did they issue us business licenses? Why did they happily collect our General Excise Tax (GET) payments for years on these exact products?
They watched us build an industry. They profited from it. And now that they have decided to change the enforcement game, they are rewriting history to pretend we were “rogue actors” the entire time.
They permitted a market to flourish through their own inaction, and now they are using that inaction to paint us as criminals.
2. The “Total THC” Bait-and-Switch
The DOH argues that Hawaii has “long defined hemp using a ‘total THC’ standard” and that Act 269 changes nothing.
This is a deliberate distortion of reality. We built our businesses based on the 2018 Federal Farm Bill, which legalized hemp containing less than 0.3% Delta-9 THC. The DOH knows this. By enforcing their own restrictive “Total THC” calculation (adding THCA + Delta-9), they are effectively re-criminalizing products that are federally legal.
This is in fact exactly what I’m suing them for!
They let us operate under the federal standard for years. Now, they are retroactively enforcing a state technicality to wipe us out, claiming they are just “clarifying” the rules.
3. “Clarification” vs. Criminalization
In their emails to reporters, DOH officials repeatedly insist that Act 269 “does not change [the] legal status” of these products, but simply “clarifies registration and enforcement requirements”.
Let’s be clear: A law that introduces felony charges, product seizures, and nuisance closures is not a “clarification.” It is an ambush.
Calling this a “clarification” is a PR tactic designed to hide the truth: The state is moving the goalposts and arming themselves with new weapons to prosecute business owners who operated in good faith.
The Truth They Won’t Admit
The DOH’s strategy is clear. They want to delegitimize us. They want the public to believe that we didn’t lose our businesses—they want you to believe we never had valid businesses to begin with.
They are attacking our credibility to avoid taking responsibility for the confusion they created and the livelihoods they are destroying.
We operated openly. We followed the federal Farm Bill. We served our community. We will not let the DOH rewrite history to cover up their own regulatory failures.
Lance Alyas,
Oahu Dispensary and Provisions