Dr. Dre had his aftermath and so does SB 2398, Relating to Tattoo Artists. This past Wednesday, Tattoo Adam went down to the Hawaii State Legislature, took part in the political process and testified in opposition of the Senate Bill, which proposed for the State Department of Health of Hawaii to contract out for temporary tattoo licenses to out of state tattoo artists in the event of a convention.
Many may misconstrue what our Waikiki tattoo shop Leader was doing. Like why would Tattoo Adam testify against a bill that is seemingly about a convention?
Truth be told, Tattoo Adam is pro-convention, and his hands were tied because he wasn’t in support of the Department of Health possibly contracting to online services and schools, which are not up to par with the standards that many of the tattooists in the industry are held to. If that Bill went through, it opened the door for people who bought kits on EBay and passed a test to come in and tattoo our people. Not cool, so he had to do a little something about that. And more people should to because poorly crafted policy like that gets passed at every level of government each and every year, impacting all of our people.
And in the case of that bill, it wasn’t fair to our Hawaii tattoo artists, who pay taxes here and have to wait the full time to take the test and be licensed. At any rate, the ill bill was killed by the Joint Senate Committees.
So let’s get on with a cool ass legit convention, eh!!!
434 Custom Tattooing 
…it wasn’t fair to our Hawaii tattoo artists, who have to wait the full time to take the test and be licensed.
That’s a good thing? In my opinion, I would rather risk the scratcher having passed the test being able to tattoo at conventions. If people can’t judge good work, its buyer beware.
The wait for taking the test is the lamest hindrance to development of the art on the islands in my opinion. It prevents high guality artists from visiting and schooling us on quality. In my opinion, the SHOP should be well regulated and let the owner decide who is fit to work in it. Lets not even get into the reality that any non-english reading artist would not be able to get licensed as our laws exist…the test is english only.
All safety regulation differences from region to region should easily be conveyed through briefing and inspection. When my shop was inspected, all issues that relate to the test and their method of implementation were pretty much discussed on the spot. That test and the wait is BS.