Big Island plan for pot goes up in smoke
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — It was a simple, if provocative, idea: Big Island police regularly harvest marijuana, and county officials reasoned the state might need some for patients who use cannabis under the state's medical marijuana law.
Advertiser library photo • Aug. 5, 2000
So, the county offered to supply the state with pot.
The Hawai'i County Council offered to supply the state with pot for patients who use medical marijuana.
As it turns out, the situation isn't simple at all, and the state doesn't want the county's marijuana.
That oddball bit of intergovernmental communication began in 2001, when the Hawai'i County Council approved a resolution authorizing Mayor Harry Kim to accept federal money to help pay for marijuana eradication missions.
The resolution imposed a number of conditions on the program, including instructions that there were to be no aerial herbicide spraying and no rappelling from helicopters within 500 feet of houses during the raids.
The council added a section instructing county police to work with the state to "develop a plan where a portion of the confiscated marijuana can be set aside for medical marijuana use."
Councilman Gary Safarik, who represents Upper and Lower Puna, where much of the Big Island's illegal marijuana crop is grown, said he and Councilman Curtis Tyler got the idea for redistributing confiscated marijuana from constituents who use medical marijuana and complained that neighbors were stealing their plants.
Safarik, a former Honolulu police officer, said some of his old police buddies ribbed him about the resolution, but Big Island police gamely approached the state about the idea.
Not likely, replied Kurt Spohn, deputy attorney general. In a written response to the county, Spohn warned that anyone who tries to implement the council's novel proposal risks federal prosecution.
And as the chief law enforcement authority in the state, the attorney general won't knowingly violate a federal law prohibiting marijuana by developing a plan to distribute the stuff, Spohn wrote.
