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State v. Kantner1/20/1972
The sole issue presented in this consolidated appeal is the constitutionality of the statutory scheme for the control of the possession of marihuana. HRS § 329-5, as amended by Act 161, S.L.H. 1969, which served as the basis of parole revocation of petitioners Nowell and Winter and upon which defendant Kantner was convicted, provides as follows:
Additional acts prohibited; penalty. No person shall knowingly . . . possess . . . any narcotic drug as defined by section 329-1 except as provided in this chapter. . . .
Under HRS § 329-1 the term "narcotic drug" is defined as follows:
'Narcotic drugs' mean any of the following . . .
(5) Marihuana. Marihuana includes the following substances under whatever names they may designate: all parts of the plant cannabis sativa, L., whether growing or not, the seeds thereof, the resin extracted from any part of the plant, and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of the plant, its seeds, or resin, but, shall not include the sterilized seed of the plant which is incapable of germination.
Appellants concede that the State may properly regulate the possession of marihuana under the police power. The thrust of appellants' argument is that the State has so unreasonably
and irrationally exercised its police power that the present statutory scheme for the prohibition of possession of marihuana violates the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process of law. Uncontroverted evidence showed that in some respects marihuana was unlike the opiates and other drugs within the scientific definition of the word "narcotic". The evidence, however, tended to show that marihuana has many of the properties of a narcotic, scientifically defined.
Proceeding from the proposition that marihuana is not a narcotic scientifically defined, appellants contend that the defining of the term narcotic so as to include marihuana and the inclusion of marihuana within the same class as the more harmful narcotic drugs is so unreasonable and arbitrary as to violate the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process of law.
The legislature has a broad power to define terms for a particular legislative purpose, and the courts, as a general rule of construction, are bound to follow legislative definitions of terms rather than commonly accepted dictionary, judicial or scientific definitions. Bailey's Bakery, Ltd. v. Borthwick, 38 Haw. 16 (1948); Akai v. Lewis, 37 Haw. 374 (1946); Hawaii Consolidated Ry. v. Borthwick, 34 Haw. 269 (1937). We think the requirements of due process place some limitation on the manner in which a legislature may use words. If we believed that the use of the word narcotic to include marihuana were so misleading as to confuse
legislators in their law-making activities or to confuse persons of common understanding in their effort to determine whether the possession of marihuana constitutes a crime, it would clearly be our duty to declare the unconstitutionality of the statute. Inasmuch as the word "narcotic" in popular usage includes marihuana, it is no violation of the guarantee of due process of law for the legislature to employ such usage over the more precise usage favored by the scientific community. Cf., Territory v. Tam, 36 Haw. 32, 37 (1942).
We think that appellants' contentions concerning the legislative classification of marihuana are untenable. App
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