Don’t Ever Bake Cookies With the Hawaii Department of Health!

How Hawaii’s Department of Health Uses Heat to Turn Legal Hemp Into “Illegal” THC—and Why the State’s THCA Rules Are Being Challenged in Federal Court

Many people have understandably been quite confused about the exact nuances of the new hemp laws and, by extension, the central issue in our lawsuit against the government. It’s actually far simpler and more straightforward than one would expect, and when the problem is broken down to its roots, it becomes truly clear just how absurd, outrageous, and improper this entire fiasco has been.

Like all similar such laws, the ones at issue here criminalize certain products based on the measurement of some factor or element. More specifically, the state looks at the product in question and assesses the characteristics present. If you have a bag of powder, it looks towards the presence of certain elements to determine if it is flour and thus perfectly fine to possess or, if in fact the elements confirm it is cocaine, thereby making it a serious crime to possess.

One would think they’d logically do the same with hemp. It makes sense, after all. But they don’t!

Hawaii new laws don’t look to see if the product one has is hemp. They’re not testing for the traits and elements that chemically constitute the plant. Rather, they test what that hemp plant would feature and become IF and ONLY IF someone puts heat to it! It tests what your hemp could become in an oven. Let me prove how crazy that is — with a cookie recipe.

Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grab a mixing bowl. We’re going to break the law without changing a single thing.

First, three facts. That’s all you need.

Fact one. Raw hemp flower doesn’t get you high. The stuff in the jar contains a molecule called THCA. THCA does nothing to your brain. You could eat it like a salad and feel nothing.

Fact two. Heat changes it. Put THCA in an oven and it turns into delta-9 THC — the molecule that does get you high. That’s the whole reason edibles get baked. No heat, no high.

Fact three. Congress legalized hemp in 2018 and drew one clear line: delta-9 THC under 0.3%. Delta-9. The actual molecule, measured as-is. Congress did not say “delta-9 plus anything that might turn into delta-9 someday.”

Hawaii ignored that line and drew its own. Hawaii’s labs take your flower, heat it first, convert the harmless THCA into delta-9, and then measure the result. The state doesn’t test your product. It tests a cooked version of your product that the state itself created.

Now let’s bake.

Step one. Look at your hemp flower. Right now it’s legal. Federal law says so. Delta-9 under 0.3%. Done.

Step two. Grind it up. Still legal. Smaller pieces, same plant.

Step three. Slide it into the oven. Heat converts the THCA into delta-9. And here’s Hawaii’s entire enforcement program in one sentence: the state says your flower was illegal all along — because of what an oven could do to it.

Step four. Mix your cookie dough, bake twelve minutes, and think about that. The State of Hawaii wants to seize, destroy, and criminally prosecute the raw flower. The thing on the shelf. The thing that hasn’t been near an oven.

By that logic, grapes are wine. Sugar plus yeast plus time equals alcohol — so raid the Foodland produce aisle! Flour is bread. Barley is beer. We don’t regulate things based on what they could become. Except, apparently, in Hawaii.

It gets worse.

In 2023, the Hawaii Legislature — the people you elected — passed Act 263 and legalized smokable hemp. That was the Legislature’s call to make, and they made it.

Then the Department of Health banned it again. Not the Legislature. An agency. By its own rule. An agency erased a law that elected lawmakers passed.

Agencies don’t get to do that. That’s a big part of why I’m in federal court: Alyas v. Lopez, No. 1:26-cv-00035, District of Hawaii. Judge Otake is deciding right now whether any of this holds up.

Then, the corrupt powers that be even had the nerve to go to the Legislature, find a spineless puppet like Rep. Scot Matayoshi, and give these DOH rules teeth by creating criminal penalties for violation of these outrageous standards!

Literally jailing people for countless products not because of what they themselves actually are, but because of what they’d become if you baked them or put a lighter to them.

Lance Alyas owns Oahu Dispensary and Provisions and is lead plaintiff in Alyas v. Lopez, No. 1:26-cv-00035 (D. Haw.).