Virginia lawmakers again unlikely to set up marijuana sales

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — In 2021, Virginia turned the primary Southern state to legalize marijuana, adopting a coverage change that allowed adults to own and domesticate the drug.

However lawmakers didn’t totally enact a framework for leisure retail gross sales. Partisan gridlock thwarted any motion on the difficulty final yr, and 2023 appears unlikely to be any completely different.

A Republican-led Home panel defeated on Tuesday the Democrat-controlled Senate’s most important surviving retail invoice, which might have allowed gross sales to start subsequent yr by present medical marijuana dispensaries and at new retail companies in communities which have traditionally been economically deprived.

“We’re type of dragging our ft on establishing a retail market that would present a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in tax income, may present a examined product for adults and might be stored out of the fingers of kids,” Sen. Adam Ebbin, the invoice’s sponsor mentioned, simply earlier than the subcommittee defeated the measure.

With the sale of marijuana nonetheless unlawful outdoors of medical dispensaries, the state finds itself in a holding sample that some say has elevated black-market marijuana gross sales and allowed unregulated, intoxicating hemp-derived merchandise to proliferate and sicken individuals, together with youngsters.

“Having authorized possession with out authorized procurement simply doesn’t make sense,” mentioned Trent Woloveck, the chief technique director for Jushi — a multistate, publicly traded hashish firm that is at the moment permitted to function a grower-processor facility and medical dispensaries in Virginia.

Earlier this session, the identical Home subcommittee killed a invoice that may merely have directed the Virginia Hashish Management Authority to draft rules for the retail market. The laws would have introduced the rules to the Common Meeting once more subsequent yr earlier than retail gross sales may start.

Greg Habeeb, a lobbyist who represents the Virginia Hashish Affiliation, testified that he thought the watered-down invoice ought to win unanimous approval and might be one thing Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin would assist. The invoice’s failure reveals that “there’s not a lot hope for a full-fledged grownup use invoice to move,” Habeeb mentioned in an interview.

Youngkin, a attainable 2024 presidential contender, has not weighed in immediately on retail gross sales, although his administration has opposed payments that may set up them. He informed reporters final month that he’s targeted on reining within the proliferating hemp-derived merchandise, together with these containing delta-8 THC — a psychoactive chemical cousin of marijuana’s most important intoxicating ingredient.

“The invoice I’m monitoring and on the lookout for is a invoice that offers with hemp and delta-8 and the rules and client security round these merchandise. And proper now, we have now merchandise which are being mislabeled and missold and being focused towards youngsters,” mentioned Youngkin, whose press workplace declined to elaborate on his place Tuesday.

A handful of payments aimed toward enacting client safety mechanisms for unregulated, intoxicating cannabinoid merchandise have been launched this yr. Of the measures which are nonetheless alive because the session attracts towards a detailed, one is sponsored by Republican Home Majority Chief Terry Kilgore and one other by Republican Sen. Emmett Hanger. Each would set up packaging, labeling and testing necessities.

It seems seemingly the difficulty is headed for a convention committee, a small group of lawmakers who meet to work out a compromise when the 2 chambers’ variations include intractable variations.

In a latest committee listening to, Kilgore mentioned of his invoice: “I feel it’s similar to Sen. Hanger’s. I do know there’s a number of variations — there could also be some extra — however we’re simply attempting to get the method shifting ahead.”

Hanger responded that it wasn’t clear but “how comparable the similarities are,” however he didn’t object to shifting the ball ahead.

The alternate was consistent with different committee hearings this session on hashish points, which have been at various instances contentious, disjointed or restricted in dialogue about what the laws at hand would truly do.

Senate Democrats have acknowledged that the preliminary legalization invoice handed in a comparatively chaotic rush however have laid blame at Youngkin’s ft for being apparently bored with shifting the difficulty ahead this session.

“We discovered once we acquired in, it was difficult, and we wanted to spend extra time to determine it out,” Sen. Scott Surovell mentioned about Democrats’ preliminary laws. “Then we acquired a brand new governor who does not need to discuss it. And all these issues aren’t going to get resolved till the governor steps as much as the desk.”

Republicans, who do not have the votes to roll again legalization, have repeatedly slammed Democrats for creating the state of affairs Virginia finds itself in.

“They didn’t move the invoice to legalize hashish with out making a hashish market,” Habeeb, a former GOP lawmaker, mentioned of Republicans. “That’s the hand they’ve been dealt and that they now have to determine easy methods to take care of.”

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