Virginia Government Cannabis Commission Holds First Meeting, With Focus On Preparing Retail Sales Legalization Bill For Next Year

Members of a newly re-established cannabis commission in Virginia held an
initial meeting on Wednesday, kicking off what’s slated to be months of
hearings focused on the future of marijuana in the commonwealth—a process
expected to result in a revised proposal to legalize retail sales that
lawmakers plan to introduce next session.

Convened as part of a House joint resolution passed by the legislature
earlier this year, the group is charged with gathering public input and
making recommendations on an array of policy matters around Virginia’s
would-be transition into a full-fledged adult-use commercial cannabis
market.

“Our goal is to create a successful approach to cannabis that’s rooted in
protecting the public, the principles of restorative justice, economic
equity and public health,” Del. Paul Krizek (D), who sponsored the
resolution that created the commission as well as past legal sales bills,
said at the start of the hearing. “The idea will be to craft the best bill
possible to reintroduce the next session.”

Use and possession of marijuana has been legal in Virginia since 2022, but
retail sales remain forbidden—a situation that’s helped fuel a
multibillion-dollar illicit market. Despite efforts by Democrats in past
years to legalize and regulate the retail system, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R)
has stood in the way of the reform, vetoing proposals passed by lawmakers
during each of the last two sessions.

Youngkin, however, is term-limited and unable to run for re-election in
November. The governor’s replacement is likely to decide whether regulated
products will become available in the commonwealth in the next few years.

The panel, formally called the Joint Commission to Oversee the Transition
of the Commonwealth into a Retail Cannabis Market, consists of six
lawmakers from the House and four from the Senate. At Wednesday’s meeting,
the group first elected a chair and vice chair—Krizek and Sen. Lashrecse D.
Aird (D), respectively—and heard an overview of the state’s historical and
existing cannabis laws.

As a starting point for the coming session, Krizek and others have said the
plan is to begin with the legislation sent to Youngkin this past
session, SB 970 and HB 2485. The language in those measures mirrored a
proposal also passed by lawmakers the previous year.

“The bill we passed the last two years, with a few small tweaks, is my
starting point,” Krizek told Marijuana Moment in an email before the
meeting. At the hearing itself, staff walked members through that proposal
in considerable detail.

Some commission members, including those that expressed skepticism of
commercial marijuana sales, said they were looking forward to learning more
about cannabis and its regulation ahead of next legislative session.

“I am here because my constituents hired me to make the hard decisions, and
I’m here to learn everything about both sides,” said Sen. Christine New
Craig (R), “and I want to make sure we do it correctly.”

The commission is set to have three more meetings this year, with the next
scheduled for August 20.

“We’ll continue to meet through July 1, 2028, when this commission
expires,” Krizek said.

Among the goals in legalizing and regulating retail marijuana sales, Krizek
said, are to generate revenue for community reinvestment, create new small
and local businesses, strengthen the state’s agricultural sector, address
racial inequities in cannabis enforcement, protect public health and
increase state funding for pre-K education.

Other issues that members of the commission brought up at Wednesday’s
meeting included adjustments to the state’s medical marijuana system,
regulation of the consumable hemp market and a desire to better understand
matters like product potency and potential dangers of driving under the
influence.

Krizek said a main goal the group’s meetings will be to gather public input
about what matters in a legal retail marijuana market.

“What I really love about being on this commission, I think, is that we’re
going to have a lot of opportunity to get to generate some public
input—from the stakeholders and from the general public—and do it without
being pressured for time and get a really good bill through for next year,”
he said.

To that end, the panel concluded Wednesday’s meeting with just over 30
minutes of public comment, from speakers who overwhelmingly emphasized
their interests in promoting a competitive, accessible industry with
workable regulations for small and equity-owned businesses.

Marijuana Justice, an organization that prioritizes equity and community
reinvestment, has called for the state’s legal marijuana framework to
create a market that’s “equitable, competitive, and sustainable.”

Among the group’s priorities include prioritizing equity in business
licensing and program participation, providing applicants with access to
capital investment and financial support, working to prevent monopolization
of the industry and investing revenue from legal marijuana in communities
disproportionately impacted by prohibition.

Speaking to the commission, Chelsea Higgs Wise, the group’s founder and
executive director, offered “continued support” to lawmakers around matters
such as how to prevent the adult-use market from being dominated by just a
few large companies. She said Virginia’s legal framework should adopt a
public health and equity lens.

Higgs Wise also pointed out that lawmakers have not yet discussed the
possibility of social consumption lounges, where adults could legally use
marijuana, noting that past bills would allow landlords to prohibit renters
from using cannabis in their units. And she warned against the early
adoption of unproven roadside impairment tests, which could perpetuate
racial disparities in marijuana arrests.

Damian Fagon, a former New York State cannabis regulator who’s now the
executive leadership fellow at the advocacy nonprofit Parabola Center,
encouraged members to learn lessons from New York and other states that
have set up licensing structures that prevent a single entity from
controlling the entire supply chain, from seed to sale.

“Virginia has an incredible advantage of hindsight,” Fagon said. “You can
see how allowing a single company to control everything from seed to sale
leads to markets with fewer consumer choices [and] little to no diversity
in ownership or small business access.

He urged the panel “to build Virginia’s market on this proven two-tier
foundation” and “mandate the separation of producers and retailers.

“Virginia has the opportunity to create the most equitable and prosperous
cannabis market in the American South,” Fagon said. “A two-tier system is
the only way to do this.”

Fagon earlier this month published an op-ed in Marijuana Moment warning
that the corporate tobacco industry is working to prioritize their own
business and financial interests in cannabis reform over public health and
consumer needs.

Sen. Adam Ebbin (D) reminded the panel at Wednesday’s hearing “to not lose
sight of our overall mission.”

“We heard a lot of good information, a lot of points from some experts,”
Ebbin said near the close of the meeting, but he emphasized that “we know
that marijuana is being sold in this commonwealth, and thanks to Gov.
Youngkin’s veto pen, the way it’s being sold is with illegal, untaxed
enterprises.”

“My goal is to move sales away from the illegal market on the street corner
to behind an age-verified counter with a tested product,” the senator
continued, “and I think that’s a goal that most of the members of this
commission share. How we do it is, you know, a significant charge that will
have to resolve over the coming meetings.”

In separate comments to Marijuana Moment at the end of the hearing, JM
Pedini, executive director for Virginia NORML and development director at
NORML’s national organization, stressed the importance of voters electing a
governor who’s open to cannabis reform. Regardless of what lawmakers put in
a legal sales bill, an executive who opposes the reform could keep cannabis
commerce illegal for years to come.

“The most important consideration for any Virginian interested in
participating in the adult-use market—either as a consumer or a business—is
their vote this November,” Pedini said. “If Virginians fail to elect a
governor who has committed to signing an adult-use retail measure, then
they will not again have the opportunity to legalize sales until 2030.”

Jason Blanchette, president of the Virginia Cannabis Association (VCA), was
initially skeptical of the need for the commission, telling Marijuana
Moment in an interview last month that the group didn’t plan to
participate. He said at the time that VCA was focused on reintroducing the
same bill that lawmakers sent to Youngkin in the past two years.

But Blanchette was present at Wednesday’s commission meeting. He told
Marijuana Moment that he’s recently “formed a much more positive opinion on
the group,” in part because he’s been reassured that members are set to use
the past bill as a “starting basis” for any new proposed legislation.

“Didn’t actually think I’d find myself up here today,” he told the
commission, thanking members for their engagement. “Words do matter. And
this bill—the current form of this bill—has passed twice. It’s just been
vetoed twice by the governor.”

Youngkin has also stood in the way of more incremental reforms. In May, for
example, he vetoed a bill that would have allowed deliveries of medical
marijuana directly to patients at locations other than their own homes. It
would have also updated product labeling requirements so packaging would
more clearly indicate THC and CBD levels.

In March, after the legislature passed the legislation, Youngkin
recommended an amendment that would remove language to allow marijuana to
be delivered to places other than a patient’s private residence. Lawmakers
later declined to make that change, however, and sent the unamended bill
back to the governor.

The proposal had strong support in both chambers, passing the Senate on a
30–10 vote and winning final approval in the House on an 84–14 margin. But
Youngkin nevertheless rejected it.

“While accurate labeling is essential to ensure patients receive consistent
and safe medical cannabis,” he wrote in a veto message, “this bill would
codify the ability to deliver medical cannabis to commercial businesses and
temporary residences, raising public safety and regulatory concerns.
Permitting deliveries to businesses—including locations where substance
abuse, gambling, or other high-risk activities may occur—creates
unnecessary risks for diversion, theft, and unintended access by minors.”

Pedini at NORML described the veto at the time as “yet another example of
the attacks on legal cannabis and responsible consumers that are underway
across the nation.”

Youngkin in March also vetoed a host of other drug reform proposals passed
by lawmakers, including the legal sales bill and another to authorize the
prescription of a synthetic form of psilocybin as soon as the federal
government authorizes its use.

Beyond the legal sales and psilocybin bills, the governor also rejected a
number of other cannabis-related reforms this session, including efforts to
resentence people serving time for cannabis offenses and protect the
parental rights of those who legally use the drug.

Youngkin agued in a veto statement that legalizing sales of adult-use
marijuana “endangers Virginians’ health and safety.”

“States following this path have seen adverse effects on children’s and
adolescents’ health and safety, increased gang activity and violent crime,
significant deterioration in mental health, decreased road safety, and
significant costs associated with retail marijuana that far exceed tax
revenue,” the governor claimed. “It also does not eliminate the illegal
black-market sale of cannabis, nor guarantee product safety.”

Even before the start of the current legislative session, Youngkin’s office
had signaled it had no interest in the reform.

Asked by Virginia Public Media (VPM) late last year 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.”

Reform advocates are already watching to see where his possible
replacements stand on legalization and other cannabis policy changes.

Two frontrunners for the position—Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears
and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger—have starkly different
views on the reform.

Earle-Sears recently echoed Youngkin’s views, saying of legalization:
“There’s no hope in that.”

She’s also said marijuana is a gateway drug and that she fired a previous
employee for using it.

Spanberger, meanwhile, voiced support for a regulated retail market.

“We need a formalized, legal, emerging cannabis market,” she said. “We also
need to make sure that [tax] revenues flow into Virginia and are used to
strengthen our communities and public schools.”

The post Virginia Government Cannabis Commission Holds First Meeting, With
Focus On Preparing Retail Sales Legalization Bill For Next Year appeared
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