The state says flower, pre-rolls and vapes were already prohibited. Hemp retailers say years of limited enforcement allowed a market to develop that is now being removed.

Lance Alyas says other hemp retailers in Hawaii have contacted him privately since he sued the state over its hemp rules, but few are willing to discuss the dispute publicly.

“I can’t tell you how many have reached out to me throughout this process expressing shock at my willingness to sue and then take this on in the media as well,” Alyas, owner of Oahu Dispensary and Provisions, told High Times.

He says enforcement visits have contributed to that reluctance. Alyas described Department of Health inspectors as “old marshals and sheriffs from a western movie” who were “brash, abrasive, stern, and domineering.”

Alyas operates four stores on Oahu. He and another hemp retailer, Kyler Falces-Cachola, are suing Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez and Department of Health Director Kenneth Fink in federal court, challenging several parts of the state’s hemp regulatory system.

The lawsuit comes as the Department of Health and Attorney General have begun statewide enforcement against retailers selling noncompliant products, including hemp flower, THCA flower, pre-rolls and vapes.

Alyas says officials visited two of his stores simultaneously, photographed products and explained which items could no longer be sold.

“They gave us a warning about the products that are not able to be sold, so we had to take them off our shelves to make sure we’re going to the court with clean hands,” he said.

No inventory was confiscated, Alyas said, but officials warned about possible seizures, embargoes, fines, enforcement and arrest if prohibited products remained for sale.

The state says nothing new was banned

The Hawaii Department of Health says the current enforcement should not be understood as a new ban.

“The 2025 changes to Hawaiʻi’s hemp law created a registration system for hemp retailers and distributors, it did not newly prohibit hemp flower, pre-rolls, vaping products, or concentrates. Those restrictions predate the registration requirement.”

Hawaii Department of Health, to High Times

Act 14, adopted in 2020, prohibited the sale of hemp leaf or floral material intended to be smoked or inhaled and cannabinoid products intended for aerosolized respiratory delivery. It also established penalties of up to $10,000 for each separate offense.

The 2025 legislation, Act 269, created a registry for manufactured hemp product retailers and distributors and expanded the state’s ability to inspect businesses, seize noncompliant products and pursue violations.

Licensed medical cannabis operators had been pressing for stronger enforcement before Act 269. Noa Botanicals CEO Karlyn Laulusa lobbied House Consumer Protection and Commerce Committee Chair Scot Matayoshi and other lawmakers, arguing that licensed dispensaries were losing business to unregulated hemp retailers. According to Honolulu Civil Beat, Alyas later obtained correspondence between Laulusa and Matayoshi through a public-records request. He characterizes Hawaiʻi’s eight medical cannabis licensees as “the Hateful Eight.”

Noa Botanicals, Aloha Green Apothecary and Cure Oahu all supported the new rules during the legislative process.

The situation reflects a recurring feature of cannabis markets: written law and enforcement do not always move together.

A prohibition that is rarely enforced can coexist with an open market for years, allowing stores, suppliers and consumer demand to develop around it. Increased enforcement can then change the market without the underlying prohibition itself being new. The conduct was tolerated long enough to build businesses around it. Now the prohibition is being enforced.

Ninety percent of the revenue, gone

For Alyas, the change has been substantial.

He says his company lost about 90% of its revenue and roughly 25% of its workforce after removing the affected products. He has kept current employees at the same pay and hours but says the company cannot continue for long under present conditions.

The legal dispute

Alyas and fellow hemp retailer Kyler Falces-Cachola are plaintiffs in Alyas et al. v. Lopez et al., Case No. 1:26-cv-00035-JAO-WRP, before the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaiʻi. The defendants are Hawaiʻi Attorney General Anne E. Lopez and Department of Health Director Kenneth S. Fink, M.D., both sued in their official capacities.

Alyas is now waiting for U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake to rule on two pending motions: the retailers’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement while the case proceeds, and the state’s motion to dismiss the amended complaint. After hearing arguments on both on July 2, Otake took them under advisement and said she would issue a written order.

“If we don’t get a judge’s decision soon, we will have to close down probably within two or three weeks,” he said.

DOH acknowledges that businesses may be affected and confirms that there is currently no pathway allowing retailers to continue selling the prohibited categories.

“The Hawaiʻi Department of Health recognizes that removing certain hemp products from sale can have an impact on businesses,” the department told High Times.

That position is consistent with what Andrew Goff, head of DOH’s Office of Medical Cannabis Control and Regulation, said shortly before enforcement began. “You had time to change your inventory or pivot from whatever industry you want to go into,” Goff told Hawaii News Now in June, adding that the state had provided businesses sufficient time to adjust.

Under current DOH rules and guidance, retailers can continue selling compliant CBD products and certain topicals, tinctures, softgels, gummies, tablets, capsules, powders and beverages, subject to product-specific THC limits, testing, packaging and labeling requirements.

“At present, Hawaiʻi law does not provide an alternative pathway for hemp retailers to continue selling prohibited products,” DOH said. “DOH can, however, provide education and technical assistance to help businesses understand the existing law and prepare for future law changes.”

Alyas says those categories cannot sustain his stores.

“Our business is a majority, 90% of sales, of these types of product,” he said, referring to flower, pre-rolls and other products removed from sale. “We cannot sustain selling only these products. That’s currently what we’re doing now, only selling the topical, and soft gels, etc., and this is killing us.”

“People want smokable, not topical, that they can get online.”

Where the demand goes

The enforcement also changes how adults can access cannabis in Hawaii. Adult-use marijuana remains illegal, sitting outside the regulated market, while cannabis is available through the state’s medical dispensary system.

The possibility that some hemp retailers would close was also addressed publicly before enforcement began. State Rep. Scot Matayoshi, chair of the House Consumer Protection and Commerce Committee, also defended the policy in June. “If putting these people out of business means getting these products off the streets … then they should be out of business,” he told Hawaii News Now, referring to products he said were reaching minors and circumventing other state laws.

A 2025 economic analysis commissioned by DOH estimated Hawaii’s total cannabis market across medical, gray and illicit sources at between $16.5 million and $32 million per month. Legal medical dispensaries generated about $5.3 million monthly.

Removing hemp flower and other intoxicating products from retail therefore reduces one channel through which adults outside the medical program have been obtaining cannabis.

Some of that demand could move toward medical dispensaries, while adults who do not qualify for or participate in the medical program have fewer regulated options, and some of that demand could move to the illicit market.

The delayed federal hemp ban and Hawaii

The future of the same products remains under debate at the federal level.

The 2018 Farm Bill defined hemp using a limit of 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry-weight basis. That created room for products containing considerably more THCA while remaining below the federal delta-9 threshold.

Two flower samples provided by Alyas illustrate the difference. One contained 0.2104% delta-9 THC but 28.329% THCA, producing 25.055% total THC after applying the standard conversion formula. Another contained 0.169% delta-9 THC and 16.804% THCA, producing 14.906% total THC.

Congress changed that framework in Public Law 119-37 in November 2025. The new definition uses total THC, expressly including THCA, and places additional restrictions on finished hemp-derived cannabinoid products. Those provisions were scheduled to take effect November 12, 2026. On September 2, President Trump signed a funding bill that delays most of them until December 11. A carve-out leaves the November 12 date in place for products containing cannabinoids that cannot be naturally produced by the plant, which does not include THCA flower.

The additional month is intended to give Congress more time to consider a longer-term regulatory framework for hemp-derived cannabinoid products. Bills already introduced in Congress propose alternatives ranging from longer implementation delays to new rules for particular hemp products.

Alyas believes naturally occurring THCA flower and pre-rolls could remain part of that market if federal lawmakers eventually choose regulation instead of prohibition.

Hawaii’s rules do not currently make that distinction for smokable hemp. Flower and pre-rolls remain prohibited regardless of their labeled delta-9 THC or THCA content, leaving retailers such as Alyas dependent on the narrower range of manufactured hemp products permitted by the state.

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4,516 people logged what they drank for three weeks. On the days they had a THC beverage, their odds of also drinking alcohol fell by roughly half. The finding held for 23 of the 36 products tested, and moved the same direction in every one.

The largest real-world study of hemp THC beverages has published its numbers, and the clearest thing in it has nothing to do with sleep, pain or productivity.

It’s beer.

MoreBetter, a Philadelphia research firm that has run observational studies on consumer products since 2016, tracked 4,516 people across 36 products from 23 brands, at doses between 1 and 10 milligrams of THC. Each participant logged seven days before touching any product, fourteen days on it, then answered an exit survey. Every person served as their own control, measured against their own pre-use baseline. The fieldwork ran in two waves across 2025, so the results are new rather than the research. The company published the full dataset free on its Real-World Data Exchange platform and prepared a findings summary exclusively for High Times, breaking out the numbers behind each measure.

On a participant’s ordinary day, before any of this started, the modeled probability that they would drink alcohol was 22.9%. On days they drank one of these beverages, it was 10.9%.

Two Measurements, One Direction

What gives that number weight is that it doesn’t come from asking anybody about it. It comes from what people logged, day by day, about what they actually drank, run through a model that compares each person to themselves.

The exit survey asked the question directly, and the answers point the same way. Two-thirds said they were consuming less alcohol. Fifty-six percent called the drinks a regular replacement for it. Those are people describing themselves, which is a weaker kind of evidence, but they line up with the behavioral measure instead of contradicting it.

The tightest number in that group is the health one. An 86.6% average with a floor of 80% across every single product means the belief holds no matter which drink somebody picked up. Worth being precise about what that measures: it’s what people think, not what is true. Nothing in this study tested whether these products are safer than alcohol.

The eleven-point gap between the health answer and the social one is the more interesting detail. People are more confident about what these drinks do to their body than about how showing up with one plays in a room.

Fifty Days Later

The obvious question about a two-week study is whether anything survives it. MoreBetter went back and asked.

Fifty days after the study period ended, the company surveyed participants from 18 of the 36 products about how their relationship with alcohol had changed. It got 1,420 responses. Setting aside the 249 who weren’t drinking alcohol before any of this began leaves 1,171 people who were. Those results are not on the public dashboard; MoreBetter provided them to High Times on the record.

Two things to hold onto there. A third of respondents reported no change at all, which is the honest headline alongside the 63%. And this is people recalling their own drinking seven weeks later, on a narrower base than the main dataset, which makes it softer evidence than the daily logs. It points the same direction anyway, and the gap between 63% and 2.4% is not a close call.

MoreBetter also says a portion of the original group has continued into a second and now a third cohort, the third of which is currently open, spanning 12 to 18 months between the first and the present one. The point is to see whether consumption patterns and substitution behavior hold up over that kind of stretch. Those results don’t exist yet.

What It Actually Feels Like

The experience these numbers describe is mild and short, which is the whole design premise of the category and now has some evidence under it.

Duration is the most consistent thing in the entire dataset. Thirty-six products, 23 brands, doses spanning a factor of ten, and every one of them landed between two and 2.9 hours. The standard deviation is 0.2 hours. Whatever else varies in this category, how long it lasts does not.

Feeling high is the opposite. It swings from 18.8% of use days to 81.5%, which is what a 1 to 10 milligram spread would predict, and it means the 53.3% average describes almost nobody’s actual product. Half the people buying in this category are not particularly trying to get high, and the products know it.

The onset figure needs an asterisk. Participants picked from bands rather than clocking themselves, so 26.9 minutes is a center of mass, not a stopwatch reading.

And the hangover number, which the industry will want to run with, is a share of use days rather than a share of people. There was no alcohol comparison group in this study, so it cannot be read as better or worse than a hangover from drinking. MoreBetter says so itself, in writing, which is not something most industry-funded research bothers to do.

The Productivity Number, Handled Carefully

Participants reported roughly 36 more minutes of productive time on product days than on their own non-product days, a jump from 5.64 hours to 6.24. That reached significance for 20 of the 36 products, and every significant result was positive.

The companion measure is messier and deserves the scrutiny. The probability of reporting a productive day rose 12.5 points on average, but that only held for 13 of 36 products, and one product moved 15 points in the other direction. The accurate version is that for about a third of the products tested, people were more likely to report a good day, and for one of them the reverse was true.

Both are estimates people made about their own hours, not measured output.

How to Read Any of This

This is observational, not a clinical trial. There is no placebo arm and no separate comparison group; the comparison is each participant against their own pre-use baseline, which is a real method with real limits. People chose to enroll and chose their product through what MoreBetter calls a semi-blinded process. Almost everything here is self-reported, including the alcohol logs behind the headline finding. This describes what a large group of people reported while drinking these products. It does not establish that the products caused any of it.

One caveat matters more than the rest, and it comes from MoreBetter rather than from us. When a finding is significant for 23 of 36 products, the headline average covers only those 23. Products that showed no significant change are left out of the average, not counted as zero. Quote the twelve-point drop without the coverage number and you have overstated it. That warning is printed in the company’s own summary, in bold.

Who Paid For It

MoreBetter says it funded the Infused Beverage Study primarily itself, with partial funding from the beverage brands whose products were tested, and that those brands had no influence over protocol design, data analysis or published findings.

Twenty-three brands participated: BRĒZ, Cantrip, Nowadays, Uncle Arnie’s, Willie’s Remedy+, Woodstock, Medterra, Rebel Rabbit, Snoop Dogg’s Iconic Tonics, Herbal Oasis, Cornbread Hemp, Stiiizy, 1906, Sober(ish), Wims!, Hippie Water, Squared, Hightail, Kava Haven, 23rd State, Drippy, Good Feels and Rexis Biotech.

None of that makes the data bad, and the company reports 17 peer-reviewed publications across 12 university research partnerships behind it. It does mean some of the companies that helped pay for the study sell the products the study is being used to defend, and anyone citing these numbers in a policy fight should say so. Nothing is broken out by brand, so no figure here belongs to any individual participant.

The Products in This Study Are About to Stop Being Legal

Section 781 of Public Law 119-37 caps finished hemp products at 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container, applied to the whole package rather than a serving. It takes effect November 12.

The products in this study run from 1 to 10 milligrams per serving. The weakest one carries more than twice the legal ceiling for an entire container.

None of the 36 would survive it.

That date is still moving. The Senate has passed a stopgap that would push most of the new restrictions to December 11, and the House hasn’t taken it up. Until it does, November 12 is the law. We’ve been tracking the whole fight here.

Some brands have already made their bet. Cann pulled the THC out of part of its lineup, while B-Real and Rachel Wolfson launched into the same market with full-dose product. One side is reformulating for the rule on the books. The other is betting Congress changes it first. NielsenIQ data cited by MoreBetter puts the category at $239 million in tracked retail sales over the 52 weeks ending June 27, up 135% year over year, which is what the 0.4 milligram number is aimed at and why the fight has pulled in everyone from trade groups to Rosario Dawson.

Every figure in this article, and the several dozen measures that didn’t make it in, are free at rwdexchange.com/community. Verify a phone number or email, enter the code, then open Community Insights and the Infused Beverage Performance Data dashboard. No cost, no trial period, no card. Everything is filterable by seltzer, soda, sparkling beverage, functional tonic, and spirits, shots and mixers, and MoreBetter asks that anyone using the figures credit the source.

The data arrived after the vote.

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The WNBA has officially removed marijuana from its prohibited substances list while also laying out rules for how players can invest in and promote cannabis companies.

At the same time, however, the women’s basketball league is also adding several psychedelics to the list of banned drugs.

As part of negotiations between the Women’s National Basketball Players Association and WNBA earlier this year, the league offered to remove cannabis from its drug testing protocol. Now, under the terms of the long-form version of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) signed by representatives of both sides, marijuana no longer appears on the prohibited substances list, whereas under the prior CBA it was included under “Drugs of Abuse.”

Prior WNBA policy treated cannabis significantly more restrictively compared to the NBA, as well as multiple other professional sports leagues beyond basketball that have also adopted reforms amid the state legalization movement. First-time offenses generally resulted in treatment referrals, but repeated violations could lead to fines and suspensions.

Under the new rules, players could still be subject to testing for cannabis if they enter the league’s Drugs of Abuse Program, if they are found to have been under the influence “while engaged in activities” for the team or the league or if they have “a dependency or other related issue involving the use of marijuana.”

Those who are referred to a marijuana treatment program and do not comply with the rules would be subject to fines of $300 per day. Any player who exhibits a “pattern of behavior that demonstrates a mindful disregard for her treatment responsibilities” or tests positive for marijuana would face escalating penalties such as a $3,000 fine or suspension for three or more games.

Players could be subject to “reasonable cause” drug testing or administrative proceedings if they are convicted of a felony involving the distribution or marijuana.

At the same time WNBA and the players union are loosening up on marijuana, however, it has also added specific entries for the psychedelics dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ibogaine, psilocybin and psilocin to the prohibited substances list for the first time.

Also prohibited under the new policy are synthetic cannabinoids, which the document describes as “including, but not limited to, Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (also called delta-8-THC)) and their By-Products.”

Separately, the CBA also addresses players’ investment in and promotion of companies that sell marijuana and hemp-derived CBD products.

It says that players can hold a direct or indirect ownership interest in marijuana companies as long as the interest is passive (meaning no management, governance, voting, or executive role or other operational rights or roles” and they have less than a 50 percent stake in the business.

There is also a requirement for the company to operate “in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations,” and the document specifically notes that players may not hold any ownership interest in a business “that produces or sells any products containing any Prohibited Substance or any other Schedule I or II substance under the Controlled Substances Act.”

While marijuana has been classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act since 1970, the Trump administration in April announced that it was moving state-licensed medical cannabis, as well as any cannabinoid products approved by the Food and Drug Administration, to Schedule III, where WNBA’s prohibition would presumably no longer apply. Broader reclassification of marijuana to Schedule III will be the topic of a hearing scheduled to begin later this month.

WNBA’s rules for CBD-specific companies are looser than those for marijuana businesses in that they don’t require passive interest or less than 50 percent ownership. The document also says that players can actively promote and endorse that sell CBD products. If the products are produced by a marijuana company, however, players will first need to receive permission from the league and the union.

“Without limiting such approval right of the WNBA and the Players Association, the promotion or endorsement by a player of a CBD Product that is produced or sold by a Marijuana Company (A) will not be permitted if such CBD Product is associated by the Marijuana Company with any Marijuana Product (e.g., the CBD Product is marketed or sold under a brand that also includes or refers to Marijuana Products) or if any proposed promotion creates a reasonable risk of public confusion with any Marijuana Product, and (B) if approved, shall be subject to any terms and conditions imposed by the WNBA and/or the Players Association.”

“For clarity, any investments in or promotions or endorsements of entities that produce or sell products containing a form of cannabis (including, for clarity, a CBD form of cannabis) not expressly permitted…are prohibited,” the agreement that was finalized on May 22 says. “In the event a player engages in a prohibited investment, promotion, or endorsement, then, without limiting other WNBA rights or remedies, the player shall be required to promptly dispose of her ownership interest in the prohibited investment and/or immediately terminate her participation in the prohibited promotion or endorsement, as applicable.”

The league gave some indication about its willingness to accept the changing tides around cannabis in 2024, when the WNBA team New York Liberty entered into a partnership with a CBD beverage company.

Meanwhile, Brittney Griner—a WNBA player who was previously incarcerated in Russia over possession of marijuana—pulled out of an appearance at a cannabis event last year after discovering what she felt was a threatening message in her hotel room.

Conference attendees had hoped to hear from Griner about the nature of her incarceration in Russia, which helped fuel international debate about cannabis prohibition laws domestically and abroad.

How other sports leagues have navigated marijuana policy for players amid the reform movement.

NBA, for its part, removed marijuana from the banned substances list for players in 2023, and it also freed them up to invest in and promote cannabis companies.

The NFL, meanwhile, reached an agreement with its players union in 2024 to further reform its marijuana policies, significantly reducing fines for positive tests while increasing the allowable THC threshold for players. About four years after NFL ended the practice of suspending players over cannabis or other drugs as part of a collective bargaining agreement, the league again revised its Substances of Abuse Policy and Performance Enhancing Substances Policy.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in 2024 voted to remove marijuana from its banned substances list for Division I players.

The reform builds on a 2022 change that increased the allowable THC threshold for college athletes, aligning NCAA’s rules with those of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

In 2024, Nevada regulators officially adopted a rule change that will protect athletes from being penalized for using or possessing marijuana in compliance with state law.

The head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) blasted the “unfair” ban on marijuana for athletes competing in international sport events, including the Olympics that were underway in Paris at the time of the comments.

USADA CEO Travis Tygart said it was “disappointing” that WADA has maintained the cannabis prohibition based on what he considers a misguided justification.

WADA did carry out a review into its marijuana policy at the request of USADA and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) following the controversial suspension of U.S. runner Sha’Carri Richardson, who was barred from participating in the Olympics in 2021 after she tested positive for THC. Richardson said she used cannabis to cope with the recent passing of her mother.

While UFC announced in late 2023 that it was formally removing marijuana from its modified banned substances list for athletes, the league notified participants that the reform didn’t apply under California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) rules.

UFC advised fighters that they could be subject to a $100 fine by CSAS if they tested over 150 nanograms of THC per milliliter ahead of the UFC 298 event that took place in February.

In 2024, NFL announced it was partnering with Canadian researchers on a clinical trial to test the safety and efficacy of CBD for pain management and neuroprotection from concussions—key issues for many football players who experience injuries as part of the game.

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