Those who have no respect for the law are outside of it. That’s why we call them outlaws.
On June 23, 2026, the Department of Health and the Attorney General announced statewide enforcement against Hawaiʻi’s hemp businesses.
The enforcement was to begin come July 1.
My hearing in federal court was July 2.
One day. The state gave us a deadline that fell one day before I got to stand in front of a judge and explain why the whole thing was unconstitutional.
Think about what that means, because it is not subtle. Whatever happened in that courtroom, whatever the judge decided, we were going to walk in there already gutted. And here I sit on July 23 — three weeks later — still waiting for the ruling.
What an announcement actually does
They never had to padlock a door. The moment a government says your inventory can be seized and you can be prosecuted for selling it, that inventory is dead. Customers stop coming. Employees start job hunting. Suppliers stop shipping. The landlord calls. The bank reads the news. The underwriter asks questions you cannot answer. A shelf full of product becomes a shelf full of liability overnight.
So we did exactly what the announcement was built to make us do. We pulled the disputed products. We closed temporarily to protect ourselves. We reopened with inventory conforming to the state’s demands.
Then we went to the hearing. Nine days after the announcement. One day after the deadline.
And no ruling in the world un-rings that bell! Money not spent is not spent. The customer who found somewhere else to go does not come back because a judge later agrees with me.
Say it out loud
I will not pretend to know what was in anyone’s head. I will give you the calendar and one question.
June 23: enforcement announced.
July 1: comply or face seizure and prosecution.
July 2: the hearing on whether any of it is even lawful.
July 23: still waiting.
Now the question. What is a favorable ruling worth to a business that was already forced to empty its shelves the day before the hearing?
That is the whole game. The state never has to answer it, because time answers it for them, every single day, in their favor.
There is a word for making sure the courtroom is empty before the judge speaks. “Public safety” is not it.
Excellent aim
Now hold that eight-day urgency next to the rest of the year.
Noa Botanicals’ licensed cultivation facility in this state was allegedly run down to four people managing two thousand plants. Broken dehumidifiers leaked onto the canopy. Pink mold spread through the rows. Micronized sulfur went onto flowering plants headed for patients, approved from a downtown executive office. Flower was processed bare-handed out of an open bucket. Genetics were stolen twice by thieves who knew exactly which plants to cut, and management shrugged.
The Department of Health has full authority over that facility. Inspection. Testing. Licensing. The power to walk in unannounced and shut it down.
What have you heard from them about any of it?
Then remember what you heard on June 23, about shops selling a product Congress legalized in 2018 — eight days’ notice, one day before my hearing.
That is not an agency that lacks urgency. That is an agency with excellent aim.
The kind of rot this is
Let me be precise, because I am not using the word loosely.
Nobody at that agency hates me. I doubt most of them know my name. Plenty of them are decent people who took a public health job to do public health work.
That is what makes it worse. This does not require a villain, and it never gets tired. It only looks like an agency that knows exactly which businesses it will inspect and which it will not — enforcement flowing in one direction, toward the market that is not represented in the building, and away from the eight companies that are. It looks like a state that commissioned a study to measure how much market the hemp shops had taken, and then came for the shops that took it.
None of that requires malice toward me personally. It only requires knowing whose calls get returned. That is the filth. Not cruelty in a moment, but a settled understanding of who the department is actually for.
Explain the one day
Explain the one day.
Explain why an agency that could not find its way to a licensed farm for nine months found the urgency to announce statewide enforcement with a deadline that landed the day before my hearing.
I have never gotten an explanation. I do not expect one. Agencies never explain timing, because timing is where intent lives.
But you can hold the calendar yourself. June 23. July 1. July 2. And today, July 23, still nothing.
Ask them about the one day!