Cure Oʻahu was twice given an opportunity to address statements by an employee celebrating the return of consumers to street dealers and endorsing claims about untested marijuana in the licensed market. The company did not respond.
As Hawaiʻi intensifies enforcement against hemp retailers, state officials have repeatedly emphasized the virtues of the regulated cannabis system: testing, oversight, accountability and consumer safety.
Public comments by an employee of one of the state’s licensed marijuana dispensaries now complicate that message.
Kepano Mojica, who identifies himself publicly as an employee of Cure Oʻahu, participated in a series of Instagram exchanges concerning the upheaval that has followed the state’s enforcement campaign against hemp retailers. TheTradeWind reviewed and preserved the exchanges.
In them, Mojica embraced commentary portraying the illicit market as a cheaper and better alternative to licensed dispensaries, applauded reports that consumers were returning to street dealers and mocked businesses confronting the consequences of that shift.
Credit: Kepano Mojica, via Facebook
More consequentially, he endorsed claims that licensed dispensaries purchase untested marijuana from outside Hawaiʻi and relabel it for sale.
The comments were delivered not as reluctant observations about weaknesses in the system, but with conspicuous confidence and, at times, derision toward those being harmed by the changing marketplace.
That distinction is important because Mojica was not merely criticizing a competitor. His comments touched on the central promise underlying Hawaiʻi’s licensed marijuana program: that cannabis sold through state-approved dispensaries is meaningfully different from what consumers obtain on the street.
TheTradeWind contacted Cure Oʻahu and described the comments in detail. The company was asked to clarify whether Mojica’s assertions reflected Cure’s position, whether the allegations concerning untested or out-of-state marijuana had any basis as applied to the dispensary, and whether Cure condoned an employee publicly encouraging the apparent movement of consumers toward the illicit market.
There was no response.
TheTradeWind contacted Cure a second time and advised the company that publication was approaching. Publication was then delayed to provide additional time for a response.
Cure again remained silent.
That silence does not establish the truth of Mojica’s claims. It does, however, leave unanswered an allegation that would seem unusually simple for a licensed dispensary to deny if it were wholly false.
The episode arrives at an awkward moment for Hawaiʻi’s cannabis establishment.
Hemp retailers have been subjected to aggressive scrutiny in the name of testing, product integrity and public safety. At the same time, an employee inside the state-sanctioned marijuana industry has publicly cast doubt on the integrity of that very system while appearing to celebrate the revival of the unregulated market.
Cure had ample opportunity to draw a line between those remarks and its own practices.
It did not.
The resulting question is broader than what one employee said on Instagram. It is whether an industry that has relied heavily on the language of regulation and consumer protection can continue invoking those principles selectively while its own representatives publicly undermine them.
For Cure, a short statement might have settled much of that.
Instead, two requests for comment, an advance warning of publication and additional time produced no denial at all.
