Hawaii Police Used Medical Marijuana Status to Deny 766 Gun Permit Applications in Five Years, Despite State Guidance Limiting Registry Searches

Hawaii police departments cited medical marijuana status in 766 firearm permit denials from 2021 through 2025, according to a review by The Marijuana Herald of five years of state attorney general reports, while the Hawaii Department of Health simultaneously tells law enforcement that medical marijuana registry verification requests should not be made for non-criminal purposes.

The apparent contradiction is particularly significant because the Department of Health openly acknowledges that police use the registry to screen people applying for firearm permits.

On its current Individual Verification webpage, the department lists circumstances in which registry verification requests “should not be made,” including child custody disputes, employment background checks, civil litigation and “any other non-criminal law enforcement purpose.”

The same page says the department anticipates that “most, if not all” registry verification will be for criminal purposes.

But on a separate law enforcement page, the agency explicitly states that the Honolulu Police Department’s “current practice” is to check whether firearm permit applicants participate in the medical marijuana registry and deny permits to people who are registered.

Designated officers with county police departments have access to a secure registry verification system 24 hours a day. Searches can be conducted using a patient’s last name and date of birth, registry card number or the government identification number provided when the patient registered.

The Department of Health’s website does not explain how using the registry for firearm licensing — a non-criminal administrative process, fits with its separate instruction that verification requests should not be made for “any other non-criminal law enforcement purpose.”

The practice has affected hundreds of firearm applicants.

A review of Hawaii Department of the Attorney General firearm reports found medical marijuana was listed as a reason for denying 213 applications in 2021, 230 in 2022, 211 in 2023, 65 in 2024 and 47 in 2025.

That totals 766 firearm permit applications over five years in which medical marijuana status was among the reasons for denial.

The reports note that the category includes current and some former medical marijuana patients. Police departments allow former patients to apply for firearm permits once their medical marijuana registration has been expired for at least one year.

Although the number has declined sharply from its 2022 peak, medical marijuana remained the largest single categorical reason for firearm permit denials in 2025.

Of the 163 permit applications denied statewide last year, 47 — 28.8% — involved medical marijuana. Mental health-related issues ranked second at 46, followed by domestic violence and other criminal offenses at 30 each.

The attorney general’s report separately lists “medical marijuana card” as the specified reason in all 47 cases.

The Honolulu Police Department’s published firearms rules go further than the Health Department’s general description of the practice.

For firearm carry-license background checks, the department requires officers to query numerous government databases, including criminal records, warrants, mental health records and Hawaii’s medical marijuana cardholder database.

The stated purpose is to determine whether the applicant holds a medical marijuana registration.

The rules cite a September 2011 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) open letter as authority for the marijuana-related check. That federal guidance said a person known to hold a medical marijuana card could be treated as an unlawful marijuana user for purposes of the federal prohibition on firearm possession by unlawful users of controlled substances.

There is now a significant problem with that citation.

ATF’s current website says the 2011 medical marijuana firearms letter has been rescinded.

Yet Honolulu’s published rules continue to cite it.

The federal legal basis underlying categorical firearm restrictions for marijuana users changed even more dramatically this summer.

On June 18, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Hemani that the federal government’s prosecution of a man solely because he regularly used marijuana violated the Second Amendment under the circumstances of that case.

Hemani acknowledged using marijuana approximately every other day. Federal prosecutors argued that this alone made him an “unlawful user” prohibited from possessing a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3).

The Supreme Court rejected that categorical theory.

The court stressed that its ruling was narrow and did not determine whether people who are addicted, presently intoxicated or demonstrably dangerous because of drug use may be disarmed. Nor did it invalidate § 922(g)(3) in every application.

But the court specifically rejected the government’s argument that regular marijuana use, by itself and without an individualized showing of dangerousness, was enough to strip Hemani of his Second Amendment rights.

That raises an obvious question for Hawaii.

The state’s firearm screening practice appears broader than the theory the Supreme Court rejected: a medical marijuana registration establishes that someone is enrolled in a state medical program, but does not by itself establish how frequently that person currently uses marijuana, whether the person is intoxicated while possessing a firearm or whether marijuana use makes that individual dangerous.

Hawaii law incorporates federal firearm prohibitions, stating that a person prohibited from possessing firearms under 18 U.S.C. § 922 or other federal law may not possess them under state law.

But the Supreme Court’s June ruling substantially changed how § 922(g)(3) can constitutionally be applied to marijuana users.

Despite those developments, Hawaii’s publicly available system still presents the same structure.

The Health Department says designated police officers have 24/7 access to verify medical marijuana registration.

It says Honolulu police currently use that access to screen firearm applicants and deny registered patients.

Another Health Department page simultaneously says verification requests should not be made for “any other non-criminal law enforcement purpose.”

And Honolulu’s published firearm rules continue pointing officers to an ATF medical marijuana letter that ATF itself now labels rescinded.

The state’s most recent firearm statistics show that this is not merely theoretical. Medical marijuana status was used as a basis for 47 permit denials last year and has appeared in 766 denials since 2021.