Big Island police ease gun permit rules for medical marijuana users

Hawaii Police Department will no longer treat a valid medical cannabis license as an automatic bar to a firearm permit, a shift that could reopen the process for Big Island applicants who were previously turned away on marijuana grounds alone. In a June 29 letter to Dr. James Berg, Chief Reed Mahuna said the department had reviewed the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Hemani ruling and would bring HPD’s permitting process into line with that decision.

The change replaces a harder line HPD took in a May 4, 2021 letter from former Chief Paul Ferreira. That May 4, 2021 letter held that holding a medical marijuana card within the prior year gave reasonable cause to believe a person was a current unlawful user of a controlled substance and therefore prohibited from possessing firearms. HPD will now look at the full record, including criminal history, restraining orders, mental health treatment and drug addiction history. The department will not deny an application if the only issue is a medical marijuana card. State law recognizes medical cannabis, but federal gun law still bars possession by anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, and Hawaii’s firearms statute incorporates those federal prohibitions by reference.

Police denied 332 of just over 4,800 firearm permit applications in 2023, a 6.9% denial rate. Of those denials, 191, or 57.5%, were primarily tied to medical marijuana. Statewide, the Hawaii attorney general’s 2025 firearms report shows 19,364 personal and private firearm permit applications were processed, 163 were denied, and 47 denials, or 28.8%, were tied to medical cannabis status.

The Hawaii Department of Health counted 28,735 in-state patients with valid medical cannabis registrations on Dec. 31, 2025, and 28,849 valid in-state patients as of May 31, 2026. Berg, founder of Greener Healing Ways and a longtime certifying physician, has long received firearm certification forms from registered patients worried they would be denied gun ownership solely because they held a state-issued cannabis card.

The June 18 Hemani decision, which came down 9-0, held that the government’s prosecution of Ali Hemani under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) could not stand without a showing that modern firearm restrictions fit the nation’s historical tradition of regulation.