Virginia Democrats Will Reintroduce Plan To Legalize Marijuana Sales Even As GOP Governor Signals Another Veto
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A pair of Virginia Democrats who helped lead the legislative effort to legalize marijuana sales in the state last session say they plan to reintroduce the proposal for 2025—despite yet another veto threat from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R).
Del. Paul Krizek (D) and Sen. Aaron Rouse (D) each sponsored separate legislation this past year—ultimately merged into a compromise proposal that was sent to the governor’s desk—to legalize a commercial cannabis system in the state, where currently only personal use, possession and limited cultivation are allowed under the law. They’re expected to revive those bills for the 30-day 2025 legislative session, which begins in mid-January.
“I think we have to,” Krizek told Marijuana Moment on Tuesday. “I think it’s incumbent on us to introduce it again to keep it alive.”
Lawmakers in February passed a unified cannabis sales legalizatoin proposal that combined parts of Krizek’s and Rouse’s plans, but Youngkin vetoed the legislation the following month.
This coming year, the two legislators will begin with a common bill, based on the compromise last year that passed both chambers, Krizek said in the interview. Rouse’s bill is likely to be drafted and introduced first, the delegate added, with his own House measure coming later in January.
“We’re gonna do the same retail cannabis bill,” the lawmaker said.
There may be some small updates from the prior version, and amendments are expected as the legislation makes its way through the legislature, but rather than carry out the back-and-forth that last session saw, this year the two sponsors will start on the same page.
Youngkin’s office, for its part, has already signaled that the governor would veto any similar plan if it passes in the coming session.
Asked by Virginia Public Media (VPM) about the likelihood of a veto, Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the Youngkin, told the outlet: “I think you can cite the fact that time and time again he has been very clear on that.”
This past March, ahead of the governor’s veto, Youngkin said that anyone who thinks he’d sign a marijuana sales bill “must be smoking something.”
Krizek said this week, however, that the issue of unregulated sales is too pressing to leave alone.
“The governor’s made it very clear that he will veto it, but nonetheless, it’s important,” he said of the coming effort. “It’s important we have a marketplace with safe, tested and taxed products.”
The lawmaker noted that more Republicans may be willing to challenge Youngkin’s opposition this year given that he’s unable to run for reelection in November. “It’s not something that Republican leaders in other states aren’t already doing,” he said of regulating cannabis sales. “It’s not a partisan issue in my mind.”
He also left the door open for the legal sales proposal to become “a bargaining chip in some bigger budgetary issue,” as it briefly was last session.
“This is our opportunity to craft the best bill possible so that we can get rid of this ongoing proliferation of retail activity that’s out there,” Krizek said. “I think that is reason enough to reintroduce this bill, even though it’s a long shot.”
Nevertheless, Krizek told VPM that he wasn’t planning a “full-court press” in the legislature given the governor’s likely veto and the fact that he wants to pursue other issues during the monthlong session. He added that the state may have to wait for a Democratic governor to finally usher in the reform.
In April, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which focuses on electing Democrats to state legislatures, slammed Youngkin for his marijuana reform opposition, saying that he “continues to hold Virginia back and block the progress made by Democrats in control of the legislature.”
Rouse told VPM, meanwhile, that Youngkin “is on his way out”—ineligible to run again in November’s election—and that “our Virginia communities will still feel the impact of the unregulated marijuana industry.
Earlier this year, the senator said in response to complaints by law enforcement that legalization would helped reduce violence around illegal sales of marijuana.
“Our young people are killing each other over something where we could attempt to mitigate those interactions by regulating marijuana,” he said at the time.
Krizek, for his part, said this week that Democrats see the approach to legalization in Virginia as “a long game.”
“That’s what happened with the cannabis bill, right? We didn’t get the whole enchilada,” he told VPM. “We legalized cannabis, but we didn’t finish the job, and this bill is just finishing the job.”
Use, possession and limited cultivation of cannabis by adults is already legal in Virginia, the result of a Democrat-led proposal approved by lawmakers in 2021. But Republicans, after winning control of the House and governor’s office later that year, subsequently blocked the required reenactment of a regulatory framework for retail sales. Since then, illicit stores have sprung up to meet consumer demand.
Hope was high among supporters last year that Democrats retaking control of both chambers of the state legislature would breathe new life into the retail sales legalization effort. But despite the party’s victories in November, even the bill’s sponsors had acknowledged the possibility of a Youngkin veto before the measure was sent to his desk.
Krizek told Marijuana Moment after the bill died that its passage by the legislature still marked progress for Virginia. And even then, he indicated he’d be back to support the proposal in 2025.
“We really did craft a wonderful piece of bicameral legislation that even garnered bipartisan support, albeit not as many members as I would have expected, but that was probably due to Governor’s antipathy toward it,” he said . “So, we have a bill we can introduce next session that will only need some minor adjustments (I did see some small improvements we can make) and gives us a head start.”
Some had higher hopes for Youngkin when he was first elected in 2021.
“With Governor-elect Youngkin previously stating that he would uphold the will of the people, and focus on creating a ‘rip-roaring economy,’ we are fully confident that he and the people of Virginia will continue to make progress,” Jim Cacioppo, the CEO, chairman and founder of multistate cannabis company Jushi Holdings, said in a statement at the time.
In an email to Marijuana Moment after the veto, however, Jushi’s chief strategy director, Trent Woloveck, described Youngkin as “a sanctimonious culture warrior.”
The governor this year also greeted less controversial marijuana reforms coldly. Earlier in March, for example, he vetoed a separate proposal that would have prevented the state from using marijuana alone as evidence of child abuse or neglect despite the measure winning unanimous or near-unanimous approval in votes on the Senate floor.
Following that action, Del. Rae Cousins (D), the bill’s sponsor, accused the governor of “turning his back on the needs of our children and neglecting their well-being by encouraging the courts to move forward with unnecessary family separations.”
“We have seen how this is playing out in our courts; with Black and Brown families receiving harsher mandates from our judges for legal and responsible substance use,” the lawmaker said. “Family separation has devastating effects both on our communities and on the well-being of children, and by vetoing this legislation, Governor Youngkin is telling our courts that they can continue to unnecessarily tear children away from their parents.”
At one point earlier this session, it appeared the retail cannabis bill could become part of a grand deal between Youngkin and legislative Democrats. In December, Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas (D) alluded to a compromise involving a sports stadium project the governor supported. But that deal never materialized, and Democrats left the governor’s proposed arena plan out of budget legislation, at which point the little remaining hope for the stadium deal fell through.
One day before his cannabis veto, Youngkin said in a statement that the stadium project had “gone up in smoke” after the city of Alexandria halted negotiations around the proposal—a possible nod to the would-be deal’s implications for his support of the marijuana measure.
Supporters of the sales bill, such as Rouse and Krizek, repeatedly emphasized the bill would not create a cannabis market in Virginia but instead regulate the state’s existing illicit market, which some estimates have valued at nearly $3 billion.
The legislation sent to Youngkin would have begun licensing marijuana businesses later this year, with sales slated to kick off on May 1, 2025. Sales to adults 21 and older of up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana flower would be allowed, with purchases taxed at 11.625 percent. Local governments could have banned marijuana establishments, but only with the support of local voters.
Here’s what Virginia’s lawmaker-passed retail sales legislation would have done:
- Retail sales could begin as of May 1, 2025.
- Adults would be able to purchase up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana in a single transaction, or up to an equivalent amount of other cannabis products as determined by regulators.
- A state tax of 11.625 percent would apply to the retail sale of any cannabis product. Of that, 8 percent would go to the state, local governments would get 2.5 percent and 1.125 percent would fund schools.
- The Virginia Cannabis Control Authority would oversee licensing and regulation of the new industry. Its board of directors would have the authority to control possession, sale, transportation, distribution, delivery and testing of marijuana.
- Local governments could ban marijuana establishments, but only if voters first approve an opt-out referendum.
- Locations of retail outlets could not be within 1,000 feet of another marijuana retailer.
- Cultivators would be regulated by space devoted to marijuana cultivation, known as canopy size. Both indoor and outdoor marijuana cultivation would be allowed, though only growers in lower tiers—with lower limits on canopy size—could grow plants outside. Larger growers would need to cultivate plants indoors. Secure greenhouses would qualify as indoor cultivation.
- Only direct, face-to-face transactions would be permitted. The legislation would prohibit the use of other avenues, such as vending machines, drive-through windows, internet-based sales platforms and delivery services.
- Existing medical marijuana providers that enter the adult-use market could apply to open up to five additional retail establishments, which would need to be colocated at their existing licensed facilities.
- Serving sizes would be capped at 10 milligrams THC, with no more than 100 mg THC per package.
- No person could be granted or hold an interest in more than five total licenses, not including transporter licenses.
- People with convictions for felonies or crimes involving moral turpitude within the past seven years would be ineligible to apply for licensing, as would employees of police or sheriff’s departments if they’re responsible for enforcement of the penal, traffic or motor vehicle laws of the commonwealth.
- An equity-focused microbusiness program would grant licenses to entities at least two-thirds owned and directly controlled by eligible applicants, which include people with past cannabis misdemeanors, family members of people with past convictions, military veterans, individuals who’ve lived at least three of the past five years in a “historically economically disadvantaged community,” people who’ve attended schools in those areas and individuals who received a federal Pell grant or attended a college or university where at least 30 percent of students are eligible for Pell grants.
- “Historically economically disadvantaged community” is an area that has recorded marijuana possession offenses at or above 150 percent of the statewide average between 2009 and 2019.
- Tax revenue from the program would first cover the costs of administering and enforcing the state’s cannabis system. After that, 60 percent of remaining funds would go toward supporting the state’s Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund, 25 percent would fund substance use disorder treatment and prevention, 10 percent would go to pre-K programs for at-risk children and 5 percent would fund a public health and awareness campaign.
- Adults could also share up to 2.5 ounces with other adults without financial remuneration, though gray-market “gifting” of marijuana as part of another transaction would be punishable as a Class 2 misdemeanor and a Class 1 misdemeanor on second and subsequent offenses.
- A number of other new criminal penalties would be created. Knowingly selling or giving marijuana or marijuana paraphernalia to someone under 21, for example, would be a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a maximum $2,500 fine, as would knowingly selling cannabis to someone reasonably believed to be intoxicated. It would also be a Class 1 misdemeanor to advertise the sale of marijuana paraphernalia to people under 21.
- Knowingly obtaining marijuana on behalf of someone under 21 would be a Class 1 misdemeanor.
- People under 21 who possess or use marijuana, or attempt to obtain it, would be subject to a civil penalty of no more than $25 and ordered to enter a substance use disorder treatment and/or education program.
- Illegal cultivation or manufacture of marijuana, not including legal homegrow, would be a Class 6 felony, punishable by up to five years imprisonment and a $2,500 fine.
- People could process homegrown marijuana into products such as edibles, but butane extraction or the use of other volatile solvents would be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Separately, in April, Virginia Health Commissioner Karen Shelton said her agency had received a sufficient number of reports of minors getting sick from cannabis products that the commonwealth would create a “special surveillance system” to track the issue.
Photo courtesy of M a n u e l.