The Customer Who Changed How I Think About Risk
A Honolulu Hawaiʻi Hemp Store Owner on Why Banning Legal Hemp Products Hurts Veterans, Families, and Mental Health—The Human Cost Behind the 2025 Federal Hemp Ban Crackdown
In this business, you talk a lot about risk. Financial risk. Regulatory risk. Supply chain risk. It’s all charts, projections, and legal memos. It’s abstract. Then, one Tuesday afternoon, a man named Daniel walked up to my kiosk, and every one of those abstract risks crumbled into dust. What remained was the only risk that ever truly mattered: the human one.
Daniel was a local, but he didn’t have the relaxed, sun-kissed ease of one. He had the posture of a man carrying an invisible weight. His eyes were sharp, scanning, missing nothing—a habit, I’d learn, from several tours in Afghanistan. Although he’s from here, he was back here in Hawaiʻi trying to outrun the memories, the dreams, the noise in his own head. He told me he’d spent a decade on a “concoction of pills” from the VA—a cocktail meant to silence the war inside him. It worked, in a way. It silenced everything, turning him into a numb, hollowed-out version of himself. It stole his sleep, his passion, his connection to his family.
He was hesitant, almost apologetic, as he asked about our products. He’d heard from a buddy that hemp might help with the anxiety without the “zombie effect.” He wasn’t looking for a high; he was looking for a return to himself. He was looking for a quiet moment in his own mind. Healing from the past traumas.
We talked for nearly half an hour. It wasn’t a sales pitch; it was a consultation. I walked him through the options, the effects, the science as I understood it. He decided on a small, low-dose tincture. I remember the look in his eyes—a fragile mix of hope and desperation. It’s a look that humbles you. It reminds you that what you’re handing over isn’t just a product in a box; it’s a key to a locked door.
A week later, he came back. The change wasn’t dramatic, but it was profound. The tension in his shoulders had eased. For the first time, he made eye contact and held it. He told me, his voice thick with an emotion I can only describe as awe, that he had slept through the night for the first time in years. Not a drugged, heavy sleep, but a real, restorative rest. He said the constant, grinding hum of anxiety had dialed down to a manageable level. He’d called his kids and actually been present for the conversation.
He looked at me and said, “ I can’t go back to the pills. I can’t go back to that nothingness. I finally feel like I’m coming back to myself.”
Daniel’s story isn’t unique, but it was the one that crystallized everything for me. When Congress and the state of Hawaii pass laws like the one threatening to ban these products, they see statistics and political problems. They don’t see or even think about people like Daniel. They don’t see the veteran who finally found peace without poisoning himself. They don’t see the father reconnecting with his children.
That day, my calculus on risk changed forever. The risk of a lawsuit? The risk of a fine? The risk of going out of business? All of that pales in comparison to the risk of a man like David having his key taken away and being forced back into the silence. The real danger isn’t the financial loss; it’s the human cost.
This truth was hammered home for me months after meeting Daniel. I hadn’t seen him for some time, I believe he mentioned going back to the states to tie up loose ends. This is around the time we were turbulent in our lawsuit. On a day when the regulatory pressure felt particularly suffocating, I received an envelope with no return address, postmarked from the Midwest. Inside was a letter from Daniel’s ex-wife. She wasn’t writing to ask for more product for him; she was writing to tell me that the man she once knew had finally returned to her and their children. She described a Sunday morning where David didn’t retreat to the darkness of his garage but instead stood on the sidelines of a soccer field, cheering for his son without the shadow that usually followed him.
Clipped to her letter was a note from that young son, written in the shaky, determined block letters of a third-grader. It simply said: Thank you for fixing my dad. I sat in the back of the kiosk and stared at that paper until the lines blurred. In that moment, the noise of the lobbyists, the politicians, and the critics fell silent. That boy didn’t care about milligrams or federal statutes; he just knew that his father was present again. That note was more than a thank you; it was a validation and vindication of our entire existence.
That letter now serves as my compass. Whenever the legal battles seem insurmountable or the path forward feels too steep, I think of Daniel’s family. It assures me that the approach we are taking—standing firm, refusing to fold, and prioritizing the human element over the bureaucratic one—is not just the right business decision, but a moral imperative. We are fighting for the moments that don’t show up on a spreadsheet: the soccer games, the quiet nights, and the families made whole again.
Our fight against this misguided federal ban isn’t about protecting a business model. It’s about protecting a pathway to peace for people who have already fought more than their share of battles. It’s about ensuring that the Daniels of the world have a safe, legal, and reliable option.
We will continue to fight in the courts and in the halls of power with every resource we have. Not for our bottom line, but for the quiet, life-altering moments of relief that happen every day. For the chance to help someone come home to themselves. We do it for the Daniels. The traumatized veteran. The tired citizens. The ones who crave relief in a world full of stressors.
And for those people, it’s a risk we simply cannot afford to take.
Lance Alyas
Oahu Dispensary and Provisions