The Hawai’i Cannabis Expo
The Immersion
The Neal S. Blaisdell Exhibition Hall — 65,000 square feet of air-conditioned exhibit space in Honolulu— is a lot of open concrete floor, and at 9 a.m. on a Thursday, every square foot of it felt like a dare.
People were still setting up. Vendors hauled boxes across the showroom, crew members ran cable along the baseboards, young people moved with purpose and straight faces — busy, focused, getting ready. The expo opened in less than an hour. Nobody was smiling. Nobody was making eye contact. The tags around their necks looked like mine, but mine would say media. Theirs said vendor, exhibitor, staff. They belonged here. I was less sure about myself.
I hadn’t done this before. Hadn’t been to the expo. Hadn’t been in this community in Hawaii. Hadn’t reported on any event — not this one, not any. For Fat Nugs Magazine, this was my first assignment in the field. My first time covering a live event. My first time walking into a room full of strangers with a recorder and a job to do. There were a lot of firsts stacked on top of each other, and the weight of them hit before I’d cleared the entrance.
I wanted to call my ride. Walk right back out. Figure out a way to give Fat Nugs a recap without talking to a single human being. Cough, cough — I’m sick. Could I do this assignment, or get out of doing it, without speaking to anyone? The math was not mathing, but I was calculating anyway.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I found the next task. What is the next step? Just go get your press pass. Focus on that task. Mind your own business. Take a deep breath.
I got in line. The man ahead of me turned around, soft-smiled, and looked me in the eye. He basically asked me what I was doing here — not with suspicion, just warmth. And I was instantly calm. I immediately knew he was a gift from God. I was supposed to be in this space, and God wanted to remind me of that.
His name was Ajunelle Spishawn Simmons. He ran a company called Mana Mushroom Honey, a microdosing supplement combining psilocybin with locally sourced Hawaiian honey — the honey from a bee farm on the North Shore, the mushrooms grown in Mililani. He’d served four years in the Marine Corps in North Carolina before reenlisting and choosing Hawaii as his next duty station. He arrived at Kaneohe Bay in 2017. My family moved to the island the same year. I didn’t know that yet, standing in line. I just knew the tightness in my chest had loosened. Something clicked back into place: I am a reporter. I asked if I could record, and I was surprised by how instantly I felt comfortable in the role. It felt natural.
Ajunelle told me about getting kicked out of the military under difficult circumstances. About the cocaine that came before. The depression that followed. The drifting. Then a friend introduced him to blue honey — psilocybin-infused honey. Over time, he stopped smoking cigarettes. Stopped drinking alcohol. Beat the depression. “It really revived my spirit,” he said, and the way he said it — not performing gratitude, just stating fact — made me believe him.
He wanted to share it. That was his answer when I asked why start a business instead of just keeping the honey for himself. He saw psilocybin heading down the same path as cannabis — slow legitimacy, state by state, hearing by hearing. Governor Green’s Breakthrough Therapies Task Force — established in August 2023 through the Office of Wellness and Resilience to explore expanding therapeutic access to psilocybin and MDMA — was already exploring therapeutic access pathways in Hawaii. “Imagine a microdosing expo,” he said.
I felt like I had a microdosing option on island now. And I felt like my first interview had chosen me, not the other way around.
The Vibe Finds You
Marcel was cracking jokes before I finished talking to Ajunelle.
I’m not entirely sure what his official role was. He was behind the check-in desk in a staff shirt — “hardly working,” as it appeared — checking in media and vendors with the energy of a man whose real job was to make everybody feel at home.
We’re both Black. Who knows, maybe that was a clear connection between us that was objectively palpable. Whatever it was, it started immediately.
The woman at the desk looked at us and said, “Oh, you’re together.” I said, “No, no, no — we’re separate.” Marcel said, “Separado” — Portuguese for separate — and then started cackling to himself as if he had just said the funniest joke in the world.
It’s hard not to smile when you see Marcel smile. His toothless grin could light the entire exhibition hall. He told another joke right after — pants-related, self-awarded as “number two” — and he was beaming with pride at his own punchline. It’s killing me right now that I cannot remember the second joke. I remember the moment in my head. I see the scene. But I can’t remember what he’s actually saying. All that’s in my head is his laugh, his smile, and the pride on his face.
Marcel is 64 years old. Half Hawaiian and half Canadian. He’s been around cannabis for 52 years and stopped smoking 24 years ago, initially for religious reasons, then because he just didn’t need it anymore. “I just hold my breath, like five [seconds] — hold my breath — and I get the same effect,” he told me. He has sleep apnea. “I’m already high.”
I asked him the obvious question: if he doesn’t use cannabis, why be here? Five years running, volunteering and staffing an expo for a plant he hasn’t touched in over two decades?
“Because my friends are here,” he said. “They accept me even though I don’t do it.”
A man who doesn’t smoke at a cannabis expo, showing up for the community. “Something wrong with me? I feel good.” And nothing about his presence suggested otherwise. His job was to bring the vibe, and he was doing it flawlessly.
I moved through the venue, and the venue kept reaching out. I walked past a booth. a woman must have seen my apprehension — my newness, my discomfort, whatever nervous energy I was radiating — because she said hi with a smile and made small talk. She noticed my media badge. She assumed I was both vendor and media, which I wasn’t, but it opened the conversation. I told her right away: I’d better be upfront. I’m a newbie. This is my first time at the expo and my first time covering an event.
She asked if I wanted to come sit down behind her booth.
Her name was Ashley Nicole, and she co-hosted a podcast called Canna Talk About It out of Oklahoma with her best friend, Kim. Ashley ran metric compliance — the state-mandated tracking system for every cannabis plant from seed to sale — for a grow, had owned her own dispensary, and was also a hairdresser. Kim — Kimmie Cannabis, as she introduced herself — ran High N Heels, an upscale charity art auction in cannabis culture where “everybody gets to dress to the nines.” Their table was covered in products Ashley had formulated herself: beef tallow with vanilla and lavender, beard oil, chapstick, marine-safe sunscreen, and a cannabis coloring book debuting for the first time at this expo.
“We’re just two best friends who have a podcast,” Ashley said. “Both grandmas. Breaking the stigma regarding cannabis.”
Then Kimmie walked up. She didn’t know me. Smiled anyway. Introduced herself unprompted. “How are you? Nice to meet you. I’m Kimmie. I go by Kimmie Cannabis.” And then, without hesitation: “Anytime you see us and need to hang — come over. You’re welcome to come right with us.”
They invited me to the Saturday after-party — the Aloha Shuttle to the off-site smoking area. “Tomorrow, we’re gonna go over to the Aloha Shuttle. If you want to do it with us?” Strangers I’d met fifteen minutes ago, offering to bring me along to the part of the expo that actually felt like a cannabis event.
“I feel like I’m running on adrenaline right now,” I told them. “I really appreciate you being so actively thoughtful.”
I meant it. Three consecutive encounters — Ajunelle, Marcel, Ashley, and Kimmie — and in every one, the door had been opened before I asked. The pattern was forming. The article was writing itself if I just kept showing up.
The Connector
I saw him in a staff shirt and made eye contact, and he smiled, so I took that as a sign. My next interview.
I thought KT was a vendor. He was not. He was running the whole show behind the scenes. Mr. Get It, Mr. Deal With It. Within two minutes of meeting me, he was already connecting me to influencers: “We have Jackie420 — he has a couple hundred thousand followers. We have Hansel — he’s a good one to interview because he beat cancer with cannabis and is an MMA fighter.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “I want to make sure I’m using everyone’s pronouns correctly.”
Like the letters. He co-organized the expo alongside Mike, the owner of the largest cannabis event in the state. He also ran a fitness expo in June with events for disabled kids. He split his time between Hawaii, where he stayed with family in the Kailua area, and San Diego, where he rented a two-bedroom behind his parents’ house for a thousand dollars a month, blocks from the beach. His business partner was one of the top mycologists — scientists who study fungi — in the world. KT could design labs, teach SOPs — the step-by-step protocols governing every stage of a cultivation facility — and run techniques. He wouldn’t call himself a mycologist because he didn’t know the scientific nomenclature.
“If you have to say you’re a master grower,” he told me, “you’re not a fucking master grower.”
He gave me his number. He told me when the influencers would arrive. He said, “This is what we do,” as if connecting a nervous first-time reporter to the right people was just another line item on the setup checklist.
Then KT called me on Friday. Not about the expo. About my career. About LinkedIn, about networking, about what future I actually wanted for myself — “not just what I think I should want, or to chase money.” He connected me with a contact named Sean who had 31,000 LinkedIn connections across three maxed-out accounts. Sean had been one of the first 100 people on the platform and charged $2,400 for four hours of intensive coaching. I started thinking about it as a birthday gift to myself.
The expo had stopped being an event and become a relationship — a behind-the-scenes organizer I’d met for three minutes on a showroom floor was calling the next day with ideas about my professional future. That’s not a business contact. That’s someone who saw you and decided to invest.
The People Behind the Booths
One of the vendors KT connected me with was Alpine Seeds, a seed bank out of Northern California that curated craft breeders — “people who are the best of the best,” their rep explained, with a small, selective list of genetics.
“Do you mind if I ask,” I said, “what does feminized or autoflower mean?”
I was learning in real time, and I didn’t pretend otherwise. A regular seed makes boy plants and girl plants, and the flowers are all girl plants — good for breeding. Feminized seeds come all female, guaranteed, better for production. Autoflower doesn’t depend on the light cycle; it flowers by age, not by photoperiod — the plant’s response to changing day length — which makes it practical for equatorial regions like Hawaii, where day length barely shifts.
“Twelve hours on, twelve hours off triggers the flower process,” they explained. “Autoflower can grow in an equatorial region quicker without needing the light to trigger the flowering cycle.”
I was noting keywords, flagging terms I’d need to research later. The reporter instinct was emerging in real time, and it felt less like faking it and more like remembering something I already knew how to do.
One breeder in their catalog documented all of his strains by numbers instead of names because he had a photographic memory for numbers and thirty years of seeds. Another bred specifically for hash, a concentrated cannabis product made by separating the resin glands from the plant material. Alpine’s rep handed me a business card and a catalog with germination guides. I had homework now.
At another booth, I stopped because I thought the guy was packing a bowl. He was sorting seeds.
Emilio ran Secret Garden Seeds out of Boulder, Colorado, alongside Enhanced Genetics in Amsterdam and Pipeline Genetics. He bred new strains and named them after what they smelled like. Banana Pure Kush smelled like banana. Watermelon Surf smelled like watermelon. He’d brought jars of flower so people could smell them and choose seeds based on what they were actually growing.
“I pass out a lot of seeds, nonstop,” he said. The cheapest pack was $25, three seeds, but he gave away freebies constantly.
I was building a catalog of characters without trying. Every booth had a person behind it, and every person had a story that reached beyond the table.
Sean from Malt Shop Bongs was turning antique vessels into hookah-style bongs for two — upcycled art, handcrafted in Hawaii, with working music boxes refurbished underneath. Each piece had a history Sean had researched, sourced from auctions across the island. Bongs as art objects hiding in plain sight. I bought my first real piece of art at the expo that day — counted out my cash with a kind of panicked delight, convinced someone was going to take it before I could pay.
Elsewhere on the floor, a glass-blowing vendor from Kailua was making pieces in real time on the showroom floor. I was truly mesmerized. That’s where I met Lex — both of us stopped in our tracks, an instant smile and connection, drawn together by the spectacle of someone creating something beautiful while the whole expo moved around them. Someone else stopped too, maybe because they saw me filming, maybe because art has its own gravitational pull. Either way, strangers were becoming friends over the act of watching.
Connecting with Hawai’i’s Cannabis Community
The Influencers Are Just People
KT told me to find Jackie420 and Hansel. Both turned out to be exactly the kind of people who make you forget why you were ever nervous.
Jackey — @jackey_420, Vegas-based, raised in Hawaii, family on the island — gets paid to smoke on camera.
“All I do is pretty much weed videos on Instagram,” he told me. “I get paid to smoke weed. They flew me down here.”
He’d had a million followers once. They took him down. Peak documented at over 600,000, but Instagram’s algorithm giveth and Instagram taketh away. He was on his sixth account.
“I’m like the clown of the cannabis world,” he said. “I have fun with the videos.”
His business model was straightforward: companies send product, pay him, he shoots a video, shouts them out. He couldn’t say “go check out this bud, it’s only fifty bucks” — just “ooh, this is some fire, shout out to so-and-so.”
He blew up in 2018, peaked by 2021, and has been rebuilding ever since. Shadow banning — when a platform suppresses an account’s visibility without notifying the user — account yanking, starting over.
“Having a social media account, especially with weed, is like having a job on your third strike,” he said. “You walk in on eggshells. You don’t know when you’re going to get fired.”
Seven years at the expo. His numbers got him a free plane ticket and a hotel room. But the reason he kept coming back wasn’t business — his family lives in Hawaii. A free trip to see them while walking around, saying hi to everybody. The expo’s ceiling, he told me, was just the law. “Once it goes legal, it’s going to be a different story.”
And then there was Hansel.
Hansel Andres Aquino — @hanselaquino — was born and raised in Hollywood, Los Angeles. MMA fighter, cancer survivor, actor, Vine OG with five million followers, comedian. The expo flew him out for the health and wellness panel on Sunday. He had a story that could fill a book, and he told it like he’d told it a thousand times and still meant every word.
“I pretty much hated the plant,” he said. “As a kid — I grew up in a very religious, religious household. Very strict.” Church four days a week. Wrestling from the age of three and a half. The D.A.R.E. program. Gateway drug.
Then, at seventeen, just after graduating high school: epithelioid sarcoma. Given three months to live. They wanted to amputate his left leg. His family said, “Just take the fucking leg off.”
“I take my leg off, I’m gonna kill myself,” he said. He was 17. He refused amputation. He refused chemo. He chose radiation — the most intense course available, because the cancer was that rare. “Something in my gut,” he said. “I usually do what my gut tells me. I may be stubborn, but it brought me here.”
They took six muscles from his left leg. The scar runs from his knee to his groin. Doctors said he’d never fight. “Nah, I’m gonna figure it out.” His first fight after cancer, he knocked his opponent out in six seconds — a record. “My fight is the same length as a Vine.”
His doctor had recommended cannabis for appetite and pain. “I was like, well, no. That’s a drug.” Then: “Fuck it. I ain’t got no choice.” He tried it. “Oh, shoot. It’s not what I thought it was.”
Cancer-free for approximately 18 years. Five million followers on Vine. Transitioned to Instagram. Just booked a movie. And now, sitting across from a first-time reporter at a cannabis expo in Honolulu, he said something I didn’t expect.
“At the end of the day, you’re helping me out by interviewing me. So I gotta say thanks.”
An influencer thanking me. A cancer survivor crediting a conversation with a stranger as a form of help. The famous people at this expo were the most approachable. That was not a coincidence. It was culture.
The Smoke Break
I was walking past a booth on the way out when I noticed the breeder I’d met that morning was no longer sorting seeds. He was packing a bowl. The real thing this time.
He stopped me and asked if I wanted to smoke with him.
I hesitated — not because I didn’t want to, but because it’s not technically legal in Hawaii. He thought I was hesitating because I’d prefer him to roll a joint instead. Classic miscommunication, the kind that only happens when someone’s already decided to include you.
We found the right exit door, which was an adventure in itself — they would not let you leave through just any door, including the one we entered. Once we figured it out, we smoked right outside the exhibition hall. Quick bowl. He mentioned he’s a quick bowl smoker, and I think I am too, and that was truly the experience. No lingering. No performance. Just two people sharing something and saying goodbye.
Hugs. He mentioned his friend would be performing something Afrobeats at the Friday after-party, said it was supposed to be good. I wasn’t planning to go on Friday — I’d made plans for Saturday. But he paused when I told him I wasn’t going, and that pause was the reason I decided to stop by.
The transition from observer to participant happened outside an exit door over a quick bowl.
The Hawai’i Cannabis Expo Bubble
By the time the last day wound down, I understood something I couldn’t have understood on that first morning. The expo was not a trade show. It was a bubble — and no one inside it wanted the bubble to burst.
On the final day, vendors who’d been selling all weekend started bartering. Indoor-grown eighths — standard 3.5-gram units, the most common retail quantity in cannabis — traded for t-shirts, jack knives, glassware, rosin, a solventless cannabis concentrate extracted through heat and pressure. The economy of the showroom floor had shifted from commerce to community. People who’d arrived as strangers were now exchanging product like old friends splitting a harvest.
I happened upon a smoke circle just outside the bounds of security’s purview. Second-floor parking garage smoke breaks with the best of them. The instant connections with a look, a nod, a smile, a pass of a jay in a group of ostensible strangers who didn’t feel like strangers anymore. Security not letting you in and out with your wares, even as a vendor, and trying to figure out a way to stash them or get them back inside — but that’s what fellow vendors, now friends, were for.
Everyone was tired but happy, and no one actually wanted the weekend to come to an end — not because there was more to sell or say, but because of what happened between the selling and the saying. The community had assembled. For three days, it had a home.
Monicah — a model I’d met at the expo — texted me afterward.
“Vendors from the mainland told me it is actually the best expo compared to others,” she wrote. “They said they felt more welcomed and that people were friendly.”
Sean from Microbros — a craft cannabis grower from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who’d done two years in Wisconsin for a pound of swag before building an entire operation with his brother from the concrete up — texted me about a Groundation concert at Republic in Kaimuki, a Bob Marley tribute.
“It was really nice to meet you,” he wrote. Jonah from Dabstars texted: “Was great sitting down with you! We are officially home and recovering.”
KT had already called on Friday. The relationships were continuing after the expo. The bubble didn’t fully burst — it just expanded. Once we got on our planes and Monday started, the physical gathering was over. But that was okay, because we were already making plans for not only the next expo on island in a year but also the ones coming up around the world imminently. Spannabis in Barcelona. Other mainland cups. The circuit keeps moving, and the people inside it move with it.
Marvin — a twenty-year-old from Kauai who’d come to support his girlfriend at the fashion show — had opened up instantly over lunch when we offered him food. Community found in strangers of all ages, just like that, sharing a meal on a showroom floor. He was a country boy at heart who worked at Arancino in Waikiki and was still figuring out what was next. We’d barely exchanged names before it felt like we’d known each other for years. That’s what the bubble does. It compresses time. Three days of the cannabis expo become a lifetime of connection if you let them.
People Make the Cannabis Community, Always
It’s hard to describe a feeling. It’s even harder to describe a good, satisfying experience. I’ve spent the weeks since the expo trying to find the right frame, and I keep coming back to the simplest one.
I walked into the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall ready to call my ride. I walked out three days later with twenty-six interviews, a piece of handcrafted art, a phone full of new contacts, text messages from people who became friends in seventy-two hours, and plans to cover the next expo from inside the community instead of standing at its edge.
What changed was not the cannabis. I’ve been a consumer for years. What changed was the context — being surrounded by people for whom this plant is not a vice or a novelty but a vocation, a medicine, a reason to show up for each other. A sixty-four-year-old man who hasn’t smoked in twenty-four years, volunteering at the expo because his friends are there. Two Oklahoma grandmas debuting a coloring book and breaking stigma from inside their booth. A Marine Corps veteran selling psilocybin honey because it revived his spirit and he wanted to share. A cancer survivor who refused to lose his leg at seventeen and thanked me — the first-time reporter — for interviewing him. A breeder who names his strains after what they smell like and shares a quick bowl outside the exit door with someone he met two hours ago.
Cannabis brings out a special spirit in people.
The cannabis at the Hawai’i Cannabis Expo wasn’t what put me on cloud 9. The people did.
