The recent spate of marijuana threads reminded me of a question I’ve had ever since visiting Maui a few years ago. I’m sure anyone who has been to Hawaii notices that dope is rather casually for sale in a lot of places. We were offered “buds” in a McDonald’s parking lot, on the road to Hana, at Haleakala crater, etc. Do they have the same drug laws there and are just casual about enforcing them, or are things different?
There are both state and federal drug laws. This fact is a major impediment, to my understanding, to the medical marijuana/marijuana legalization movement. I.e., California may make it legal to purchase marijuana (with a prescription) from a grower’s cooperative, but the DEA can still move and close the cooperative down.
That being said, the DEA or the FBI isn’t out on the street busting people for smoking the bud in the park. That’s the police’s job, and the cops will be harsh or lenient based on their own attitudes and the policies (formal and informal) of their police department.
Hawaii has neither legalized nor decriminalized marijuana, but I have no idea how severe their drug laws are. It’s possible that the penalties there for casual drug use or small-time selling are so slight that they don’t deter anyone.
Sua
Hawaii also has a climate well-suited to the drug. In the mid-eighties, the DEA estimated that more pot was exported from Hawaii than pineapple, coconut, banana, sugar cane, and a few others put together. Yeeks. That kind of supply, I would assume, would drive the price down, and make it easily available. Not that I’d know.
May I ask what year your visit was? I live in Hawaii, and I haven’t noticed the same “casual” sale of the drug you mention. Of course, I live on Oahu and not Maui, and the hardest drug I’ve ever been exposed to is caffeine, so I’m not exactly in the know. But still, I’m curious.
AudreyK: Let’s see, I believe that was three years ago. Make that September of 1997. And as you noted, we were in Maui, and we were there for one week. Dope was offered to us for sale at three or four separate times, as I said. The McDonald’s in downtown Lahaina was the first place, with the other places being more remote tourist locations. No one said “psst . . . over here,” it would just be a smiling guy saying, “buds?” and proferring a large green wad towards us.
Ex-Big-Islander speaking: No, it’s not legal, and the laws are the same. In my experience, though, the law-enforcement on the outer islands is a bit thin, and the stuff is pretty ubiquitous and an important part of the economy out there. It’s not sold in the supermarket or anything, but yes, there will be dudes asking “kind bud?” to liberal-looking tourists. Yes, you could also get arrested.
Thanks, pugluvr. I’m itchin’ to visit Maui now. 
Don’t know if it’d be as easy to find dope dealers now, though, since Maui’s been drawing more tourists the last few years. You’d think more tourists–>more development–>more people–>more crime–>more cops–>less brazen dope dealers. You’d think… but who knows.
AudreyK: You ‘n’ me both. I got a hankerin’ for a lunch plate at the Aloha Mixed Plate just north of Lahaina, with a bottle of cold Kuaipa on the side.
I’ll fly on over during my lunch break and get us a couple plate lunches! Mmmm, chicken katsu and rice…
Dope must be easily obtained on Oahu, too, now that I think about it. I went to an outdoor Hawaiian music concert (Birthday Bash, in case you’re wondering) a couple months ago, and my god, just walking through the back row could make you high. Ugh. Good thing my friend didn’t walk there with us-- he had a urine test the next day. 
AudreyK.
I’ve never been so high in MY ENTIRE LIFE as once when I went to a UB40 concert in Hilo (and only half of this effect was due to my own efforts).
Oh. My. God.
You could hardly see the stage. It was like being in a forest fire. Time and place were affected.
I think the cops just sort of washed their hands of it.
Mmmm. . . lau-lau. . . tequila with a whole bag of li hing mui stuffed into the bottle. . .
A friend of mine bought a dime-bag of oregano in Honolulu in 1984. That’s a hell of a mark-up - what’s an ounce of oregano go for, like 75 cents?
How sure are you that it’s really pot?
So… um… was the music any good?
You’re right about the cops. They were there at the concert, but they all pretended not to notice the floating, happy people in the back.
However, they were outnumbered by about 500-1, so that might explain it too…
I take it the General Question here is answered?
My siblings who live on those islands inform me that marijuana grows extensively in the middle of the islands & is heavily guarded.
Yeah, manny, I pretty much got what I wanted. The openness of the activity there made me believe that dope laws were different in Hawaii than on the mainland, but I was never bold enough just to ask someone over there to find out. Like the experts here state, it looks like just a question of enforcement.