Virginia Legislation To Legalize Marijuana Sales Clears Committee Votes, With Senate Floor Vote Up Next

Legislative committees in Virginia’s Senate and Home of Delegates each superior a proposal on Tuesday that might legalize retail gross sales of marijuana within the commonwealth, the place the place private use and possession are already authorized.

Members of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee (SFAC) voted 10–5 in favor of advancing the measure, which now proceeds to the Senate ground. On the Home facet, members of the total Normal Legal guidelines Committee additionally signed off on that chamber’s model of the invoice, voting 14–8 to ship it to the Home Appropriations Committee.

If enacted, the laws would enable adults 21 and older to buy as much as 2.5 ounces of marijuana from regulated, state-licensed retailers. Gross sales would start no sooner than Might 1, 2026, although regulators on the Virginia Hashish Management Authority may start issuing enterprise licenses in September of this yr.

Purchases of adult-use marijuana can be taxed at as much as 11.625 p.c. Municipal governments may ban marijuana institutions regionally, however solely with the help of voters.

It’s broadly anticipated that even when the reform, from Del. Paul Krizek (D) and Sen. Aaron Rouse (D), passes out of the legislature, nevertheless, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) will as soon as once more veto it.

Final yr the 2 lawmakers offered competing variations of a authorized gross sales framework, finally arriving at a compromise that handed the legislature, however that was vetoed by the governor.

SB 970 and HB 2485 choose up the place lawmakers left off.

Earlier on Tuesday, the SFAC Sources Subcommittee handed Rouse’s on a voice vote, sending it to the total panel the place it was authorized shortly after.

“The invoice units up an grownup retail marketplace for marijuana all through Virginia,” the sponsor instructed subcommittee members forward of that vote.

“This invoice doesn’t legalize marijuana,” Rouse added, repeating a frequent speaking level by promoters of the reform. “This can be a bipartisan effort to restrict and mitigate the illicit market and drive it out whereas offering revenues for our localities in our state.”

Krizek, talking to the Home Normal Legal guidelines Committee afterward Tuesday, mentioned the proposal “establishes a regulatory framework for the creation of a retail adult-use marijuana market within the commonwealth, to be administered by the Virginia Hashish Management Authority.”

Apart from transient descriptions from the sponsor in every chamber, lawmakers didn’t focus on or debate the payments throughout Tuesday’s conferences.

Right here’s what Virginia’s reintroduced marijuana gross sales laws, SB 970 and HB 2485, would do:

• Retail gross sales may start as of Might 1, 2026.
• Adults would be capable of buy as much as 2.5 ounces of marijuana in a single transaction, or as much as an equal quantity of different hashish merchandise as decided by regulators.
• A tax of as much as 11.625 p.c would apply to the retail sale of any hashish product. That would come with a state retail and use tax of 1.125 p.c on high of a brand new marijuana-specific tax of 8 p.c. Native governments may levy a further 2.5 p.c.
• The Virginia Hashish Management Authority would oversee licensing and regulation of the brand new trade. Its board of administrators would have the authority to manage possession, sale, transportation, distribution, supply and testing of marijuana.
• Native governments may ban marijuana institutions, however provided that voters approve an opt-out referendum.
• Areas of shops couldn’t be inside 1,000 ft of one other marijuana retailer.
• Cultivators can be regulated by area dedicated to marijuana cultivation, often known as cover dimension. Each indoor and out of doors marijuana cultivation can be allowed, although solely growers in decrease tiers—with decrease limits on cover dimension—may develop vegetation outdoors. Bigger growers would wish to domesticate vegetation indoors. Safe greenhouses would qualify as indoor cultivation.
• Solely direct, face-to-face transactions can be permitted. The laws would prohibit the usage of different avenues, reminiscent of merchandising machines, drive-through home windows, internet-based gross sales platforms and supply companies.
• Current medical marijuana suppliers that enter the adult-use market may apply to speak in confidence to 5 further retail institutions, which might should be colocated at their present licensed services.
• Serving sizes can be capped at 10 milligrams THC, with not more than 100 mg THC per bundle.
• No individual might be granted or maintain an curiosity in additional than 5 complete licenses, not together with transporter licenses.
• Individuals with convictions for felonies or crimes involving ethical turpitude throughout the previous seven years can be ineligible to use for licensing, as would staff of police or sheriff’s departments in the event that they’re answerable for enforcement of the penal, site visitors or motorcar legal guidelines of the commonwealth.
• An equity-focused microbusiness program would grant licenses to entities at the very least two-thirds owned and immediately managed by eligible candidates, which embrace folks with previous hashish misdemeanors, members of the family of individuals with previous convictions, army veterans, people who’ve lived at the very least three of the previous 5 years in a “traditionally economically deprived neighborhood,” individuals who’ve attended colleges in these areas and people who obtained a federal Pell grant or attended a school or college the place at the very least 30 p.c of scholars are eligible for Pell grants.
• A “traditionally economically deprived neighborhood” is outlined as an space that has recorded marijuana possession offenses at or above 150 p.c of the statewide common between 2009 and 2019.
• Tax income from this system would first cowl the prices of administering and imposing the state’s hashish system. After that, 60 p.c of remaining funds would go towards supporting the state’s Hashish Fairness Reinvestment Fund, 25 p.c would fund substance use dysfunction therapy and prevention, 10 p.c would go to pre-Okay packages for at-risk youngsters and 5 p.c would fund a public well being and consciousness marketing campaign.
• Adults may additionally share as much as 2.5 ounces with different adults with out monetary remuneration, although gray-market “gifting” of marijuana as a part of one other transaction can be punishable as a Class 2 misdemeanor and a Class 1 misdemeanor on second and subsequent offenses.
• Various different new felony penalties can be created. Knowingly promoting or giving marijuana or marijuana paraphernalia to somebody below 21, for instance, can be a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by as much as a yr in jail and a most $2,500 effective, as would knowingly promoting hashish to somebody fairly believed to be intoxicated. It might even be a Class 1 misdemeanor to promote the sale of marijuana paraphernalia to folks below 21.
• Knowingly acquiring marijuana on behalf of somebody below 21 can be a Class 1 misdemeanor.
• Individuals below 21 who possess or use marijuana, or try and receive it, can be topic to a civil penalty of not more than $25 and ordered to enter a substance use dysfunction therapy and/or schooling program.
• Unlawful cultivation or manufacture of marijuana, not together with authorized homegrow, can be a Class 6 felony, punishable by as much as 5 years imprisonment and a $2,500 effective.
• Individuals may course of homegrown marijuana into merchandise reminiscent of edibles, however butane extraction or the usage of different unstable solvents can be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Krizek instructed Marijuana Second final month that it’s potential some Republican lawmakers may problem Youngkin’s opposition to authorized hashish gross sales on condition that the governor’s time period ends early subsequent yr. Advocates hope the governor’s substitute can be extra favorable to regulated gross sales, noting {that a} handful of Republican leaders in another states have been extra open to marijuana reform.

Jason Blanchette, president of the Virginia Hashish Affiliation, instructed Marijuana Second earlier this month that he expects Youngkin would once more veto a authorized gross sales invoice if it reaches his desk this session, however added that it’s however essential that lawmakers take up the matter.

“We’ve acquired another yr of Youngkin, after which if we will get it out, get it on his desk, that’ll be two instances the Democrats have gotten the very same invoice via,” he mentioned, referring to the truth that the term-limited governor’s time in workplace ends early subsequent yr. “The sensation is that’ll set some very robust precedent for the following governor.”

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Youngkin rejected much more minor hashish final legislative session. He vetoed a proposal, for instance, that might have prevented the state from contemplating marijuana use alone as proof of kid abuse or neglect regardless of the measure successful unanimous or near-unanimous approval in votes on the Senate ground.

Following that motion, Del. Rae Cousins (D), the invoice’s sponsor, accused the governor of “turning his again on the wants of our youngsters and neglecting their well-being by encouraging the courts to maneuver ahead with pointless household separations.”

Individually, final April, Virginia Well being Commissioner Karen Shelton mentioned her company had obtained a ample variety of studies of minors getting sick from hashish merchandise that the commonwealth would create a “particular surveillance system” to trace the difficulty.

Individually this session, on Thursday a Virginia Senate committee superior laws that might fund medical trials involving veterans and “breakthrough therapies” as designated by the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA), together with psychedelic substances reminiscent of psilocybin and MDMA.

The brand new invoice references the FDA breakthrough remedy designation and the federal Proper to Attempt Act—meant to provide sufferers with terminal situations the chance to attempt investigational drugs that haven’t been authorized for basic use—in addition to quite a lot of situations that analysis exhibits psychedelics might assist deal with, together with post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD), treatment-resistant despair, main depressive dysfunction and traumatic mind damage.

Earlier this week, in the meantime, senators additionally superior laws that might seal felony information pertaining to easy marijuana possession offenses and revise the state’s record-sealing course of round hashish paraphernalia crimes. The panel additionally shot down a separate proposal that might have allowed legislation enforcement to make use of the odor of marijuana as possible trigger for a search.

Photograph courtesy of Philip Steffan.