They Want to See Everything About You. Try Seeing Anything About Them.
How a $126,000 police investigation into a federally legal hemp business produced hundreds of pages of redacted records—and raised serious questions about government transparency in Hawaiʻi.
Intro
There’s a deal every citizen is supposed to have with the government. Nobody signs it. It’s not on any website. But we all understand its terms: we give up certain freedoms in exchange for order, and in return the state operates within boundaries that are visible, accountable, and fair. That’s the contract. And in Hawai’i, it is broken so routinely that most people have stopped noticing.
I notice. I notice because I’ve been on the wrong end of it.
Four Hundred Pages of Nothing
Over four hundred pages of police reports were generated about me and my business. What those documents revealed was striking — not for what they said, but for what they refused to say. Roughly half were redacted. Entire sections blacked out. Full pages with nothing visible except a header and a footer, as if someone wanted me to know a page existed but not a single word of what was on it. Surveillance plans. Operational details. Names. Methods. All hidden behind a wall of ink paid for by the taxpayers of this state, about an investigation funded by the taxpayers of this state, targeting a business that operates openly on the streets of Waikīkī. Although I’m a supporter and a friend of many of our police officers, this is extremely shady and wrong. I know this isn’t totally their fault. They’re forced to follow orders of the corrupt.
This was not a cartel investigation. Nobody was cooking fentanyl. Nobody was trafficking people. This was about hemp — a plant that is legal under federal law, sold in retail stores across every state in this country. The full machinery of a Honolulu narcotics division was deployed against it. Undercover officers. Surveillance teams. Forensic lab work. Search warrants. A circuit court judge’s time.
When the dust settled, no prosecution was pursued. The charges were declined or closed. The State of Hawai’i spent what is conservatively and cautiously estimated by legal experts to be a whopping $126,000 of taxpayer money on me to produce absolutely NOTHING! Even more nauseating, they redacted half the record so nobody could see how the nothing was produced!
That’s the part that should concern every resident of this state. Not just the waste — the asymmetry. Rules for thee but not for me attitude.
What They Demand of You
Think about what the government demands when it decides you’re interesting. Think about what it demands of every legitimate, sincere, honest hemp retailer, in fact! It demands your name. Your address. Your phone number. Your social security number. Your employer. Your vehicle registration. Your height, weight, eye color. Your text messages. Your fingerprints. They photograph you. They want to know what’s in your pockets, your car, your backpack.
Now try asking Hawai’i’s government the same questions in return. Or Attorney General Anne Lopez. Or our Department of Health Director Kenneth Fink.
Try asking what some of the officers of the Honolulu Police Department itself was smoking when it decided on planning this operation, deploying all these officers, wasting $126,000 of taxpayer funds, and more! Ask them why such a lengthy investigation was allowed to continue when the underlying product was federally legal! It was only closed immediately after we filed the FOIA!
Ask, and you shall receive—a stack of paper replete with black bars instead of answers!
The Double Standard Every Business Owner Knows
Every business owner in Hawai’i understands this on a gut level. The state demands radical transparency from you — tax returns, employee records, compliance filings, product testing results, insurance certificates, zoning applications, building permits, fire inspections. If a single form is late, a single certificate expired, a single inspection missed, the consequences are immediate and severe.
But turn the lens around and ask the State of Hawai’i to account for its own actions with the same granularity? Suddenly there are exemptions. Redactions. Timelines that stretch from days to years. That asymmetry is not accidental. It is the architecture. Built this way on purpose. To lie, deceive, control and manipulate is their goal.
If I ran a single one of my locations the way the government runs all of its own, I’d be out of business overnight! And that is why I will never accept the premise that the State of Hawai’i has a right to know everything about me while I have no right to know what it did with my tax dollars and my name.
That’s not security. That’s not order. That’s a one-way mirror.
And it’s time someone finally turned the damn lights on before it’s too late!
Lance Alyas
Oahu Dispensary and Provisions