Virginia Lawmakers Advance Drug Reform Bills—Including On Legal Marijuana Sales, Record Sealing And Psychedelics

Virginia lawmakers superior a handful of drug coverage payments on Wednesday—together with measures to legalize business hashish gross sales within the commonwealth, seal data associated to marijuana and start planning entry to psychedelic-assisted remedy for veterans.

The Home Appropriations Committee’s Transportation and Public Security Subcommittee accredited the authorized gross sales invoice, HB 2485 from Del. Paul Krizek (D), on a 5–3 vote. It subsequent proceeds to the total committee and from there to the Home flooring.

A Senate model of the invoice, in the meantime, handed out of committee on Tuesday and now goes earlier than the total Senate.

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 12 months.

Purchases of adult-use marijuana could be taxed at as much as 11.625 %. Municipal governments may ban marijuana institutions domestically, however solely with the help of voters. Possession and residential cultivation of marijuana is already authorized within the state.

Final 12 months the legislature handed a virtually similar authorized gross sales proposal, but it surely was later vetoed by Gov, Glenn Youngkin (R). It’s extensively anticipated that even when the reintroduced invoice passes out of the legislature, Youngkin will as soon as once more veto it.

Earlier within the day, the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee voted 10–4 to advance a broad bill to seal quite a lot of prison data, together with “all possession of marijuana fees and convictions.”

That invoice, SB 1466 from Sen. Scott Surovell (D), would additionally revise the state’s record-sealing course of round hashish paraphernalia crimes.

An modification to the laws adopted on Tuesday within the committee’s Assets Subcommittee moved the enactment date of the proposal to July 1, 2026, which employees stated was supposed to permit Virginia State Police to implement the change.

“I’m involved about this delayed enactment,” Surovell stated on the subcommittee listening to, including that the state police by no means talked to him in regards to the change. “I imply, there’s 1.6 million individuals ready for reduction on this, and the system’s set to go reside.”

He ultimately agreed to let the laws transfer ahead with the modification after the panel famous there was nonetheless time left within the state’s quick 30-day session to make additional changes to the invoice.

The total Senate committee additionally unanimously accredited one other drug-related invoice, SB 1101, which, as launched by Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D), would have created a fund to help medical trials involving veterans and FDA-designated “breakthrough therapies,” together with psychedelic substances reminiscent of psilocybin and MDMA.

In a Well being and Human Assets Subcommittee listening to earlier, lawmakers adopted a substitute model of the bill that eliminated references to the fund, leaving solely a portion of Hashmi’s proposal that may set up a six-member state advisory council to review and make additional suggestions in regards to the therapies, probably upfront of a broader compassionate use program.

A report from that council could be attributable to lawmakers and the governor by December 1, 2026.

As for the push to legalize business hashish gross sales within the state, the proposal from Krizek and Sen. Aaron Rouse (D) incorporates compromises made between stakeholder final legislative session.

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 have the ability to 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 % would apply to the retail sale of any hashish product. That would come with a state retail and use tax of 1.125 % on prime of a brand new marijuana-specific tax of 8 %. Native governments may levy an extra 2.5 %.
• The Virginia Hashish Management Authority would oversee licensing and regulation of the brand new business. Its board of administrators would have the authority to regulate 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 toes of one other marijuana retailer.
• Cultivators could be regulated by area dedicated to marijuana cultivation, often known as cover dimension. Each indoor and outside marijuana cultivation could be allowed, although solely growers in decrease tiers—with decrease limits on cover dimension—may develop crops exterior. Bigger growers would want to domesticate crops indoors. Safe greenhouses would qualify as indoor cultivation.
• Solely direct, face-to-face transactions could be permitted. The laws would prohibit using different avenues, reminiscent of merchandising machines, drive-through home windows, internet-based gross sales platforms and supply providers.
• Current medical marijuana suppliers that enter the adult-use market may apply to divulge heart’s contents to 5 further retail institutions, which might should be colocated at their current licensed amenities.
• Serving sizes could be capped at 10 milligrams THC, with not more than 100 mg THC per bundle.
• No particular person might be granted or maintain an curiosity in additional than 5 whole licenses, not together with transporter licenses.
• Individuals with convictions for felonies or crimes involving ethical turpitude throughout the previous seven years could 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 not less than two-thirds owned and straight managed by eligible candidates, which embody individuals with previous hashish misdemeanors, members of the family of individuals with previous convictions, army veterans, people who’ve lived not less than three of the previous 5 years in a “traditionally economically deprived neighborhood,” individuals who’ve attended colleges in these areas and people who acquired a federal Pell grant or attended a university or college the place not less than 30 % 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 % 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 % of remaining funds would go towards supporting the state’s Hashish Fairness Reinvestment Fund, 25 % would fund substance use dysfunction remedy and prevention, 10 % would go to pre-Okay applications for at-risk youngsters and 5 % 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 could be punishable as a Class 2 misdemeanor and a Class 1 misdemeanor on second and subsequent offenses.
• Plenty of different new prison penalties could be created. Knowingly promoting or giving marijuana or marijuana paraphernalia to somebody beneath 21, for instance, could be a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by as much as a 12 months in jail and a most $2,500 nice, as would knowingly promoting hashish to somebody moderately believed to be intoxicated. It will even be a Class 1 misdemeanor to promote the sale of marijuana paraphernalia to individuals beneath 21.
• Knowingly acquiring marijuana on behalf of somebody beneath 21 could be a Class 1 misdemeanor.
• Individuals beneath 21 who possess or use marijuana, or try to receive it, could be topic to a civil penalty of not more than $25 and ordered to enter a substance use dysfunction remedy and/or schooling program.
• Unlawful cultivation or manufacture of marijuana, not together with authorized homegrow, could be a Class 6 felony, punishable by as much as 5 years imprisonment and a $2,500 nice.
• Individuals may course of homegrown marijuana into merchandise reminiscent of edibles, however butane extraction or using different risky solvents could be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Along with rejecting authorized gross sales final session, Youngkin additionally blocked extra minor hashish reforms. He vetoed a separate proposal, for instance, that may 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 flooring.

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 stated her company had acquired a ample variety of stories of minors getting sick from hashish merchandise that the commonwealth would create a “particular surveillance system” to trace the problem.