The Thin Line Between Order and Chaos: Why Good Laws Need Good Enforcement
How Hawaiʻi’s hemp regulations confuse enforcement, punish compliant businesses, and replace real public safety with regulatory theater driven by politics and lobbying
There’s a difference between living in a regulated society and living in an oppressive one. That difference isn’t about how many rules exist. It’s about whether those rules serve justice—or simply serve power.
That distinction became unusually clear during a recent incident at one of our kiosks. A tourist, visibly intoxicated before even arriving, demanded service without producing identification. When my staff member calmly explained our policy, the man exploded. This wasn’t mild frustration. He accused us of corruption, claimed we were running a scam, and raised his voice until nearby customers backed away. My employee remained professional, but the situation was clearly deteriorating.
I stepped in and reiterated the policy. The tourist responded by threatening legal action and announcing he was calling the police to report our “illegal business practices.”
I told him to go ahead.
Within minutes, an HPD officer arrived. I recognized him—we’d cooperated before when police requested surveillance footage for investigations in the area. He listened patiently to the tourist, then asked to speak with me privately.
What he said stuck with me. “We don’t have any issue with your operation. You’re one of the few places around here that actually checks IDs consistently. We appreciate that. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
He returned to the tourist, explained that businesses have the right—and obligation—to verify age for restricted products, and suggested he take his business elsewhere. The tourist left, still muttering. The officer nodded and went on his way. No report. No spectacle. Just clarity.
That interaction crystallized something I’ve been grappling with as Hawaiʻi’s hemp regulations grow increasingly incoherent. The problem facing this industry—and society more broadly—isn’t that laws exist. It’s that too many of the laws governing hemp commerce aren’t grounded in public safety at all. They’re artifacts of lobbying pressure, political theater, and regulatory capture by established interests threatened by competition.
Society doesn’t unravel because there are rules. It unravels when rules become instruments of suppression rather than frameworks for order—when prohibition replaces regulation, when enforcement targets the compliant and ignores the dangerous, and when responsibility is punished while recklessness goes unchecked.
Good laws come from honest assessments of real harm and careful calibration of responses that reduce risk without creating new problems. Bad laws come from boardrooms and backrooms—places where appearing “tough” matters more than being effective. Hawaiʻi’s approach to hemp regulation falls squarely into the latter category.
If policymakers were genuinely concerned with public safety, regulation would look very different. It would mandate rigorous third-party testing, accurate labeling, batch tracking, recall procedures, and meaningful age-verification standards. It would distinguish responsible operators from bad actors instead of eliminating both. And it would recognize that transparent, legal markets create oversight that prohibition makes impossible.
That’s not what we have. Instead, the Hawaiʻi government ignores federal protections under the 2018 Farm Bill, treats compliant operators as problems to be eliminated, and creates a vacuum where untested, unregulated products circulate freely while legitimate businesses face existential threats. The same tourist who screamed at my employee could walk two blocks and buy something from a street vendor with no ID checks, no testing, and no accountability. But even though we’re compliant, we’re the ones scrutinized.
That isn’t regulation. It’s regulatory theater—designed to create the appearance of action while ensuring legitimate commerce is pushed into spaces with zero oversight and attempting to direct all business into the hands of the corrupt oligopolies that control the market.
The officer’s comment wasn’t courtesy. It was recognition of a deeper truth: real enforcement depends on cooperation from operators who share the goal of public safety. When authorities know a business maintains standards and operates transparently, that business becomes part of the solution. When laws erase that distinction, they destroy their most valuable allies.
I believe wholeheartedly in law and order—not the performative kind, but the kind that creates predictable, fair frameworks people can respect. That requires laws that distinguish between responsibility and recklessness, enforcement that targets real harm, and lawmakers willing to resist lobbying pressure in favor of community welfare.
Hawaiʻi’s hemp laws fail those tests. They aren’t designed to protect consumers; they’re designed to protect incumbent interests. They don’t reduce harm; they displace it. And they don’t create order—they guarantee chaos.
The irony of the tourist incident is that he demanded we be shut down for practices that actually protect him. He wanted order without submitting to the rules that create it. That same delusion sits at the heart of Hawaiʻi’s regulatory approach: the belief that you can destroy legal operators and somehow make communities safer.
The HPD officer understood what too many policymakers miss: businesses that voluntarily maintain standards are infrastructure supporting public welfare, not obstacles to it. Laws written with that understanding strengthen communities. Laws written to eliminate competition do the opposite.
Society needs order—real order, not suppression dressed up as safety. That means laws that serve people, not power, and enforcement that recognizes responsibility when it sees it.
That’s the line between order and chaos. And I know which side I’m standing on.
Lance Alyas
Oahu Dispensary and Provisions