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A Senate committee on Wednesday grappled with hammering out several enforcement mechanisms for legislation that would create a legal marketplace for adult-use cannabis in Virginia.
Members of the Senate Courts of Justice Committee also faced pushback from both marijuana advocacy groups and opponents when they rewrote the code to align the penalties for the unlicensed sale of cannabis products with those that apply to alcohol.
“I really wanted to support this bill today, but you are not going to get support from me on mandatory minimums, so I really urge you all to treat marijuana differently than alcohol,” said Kalia Harris, executive director of the Virginia Student Power Network, one of the groups among a coalition of civil rights organizations that has been driving the effort to legalize cannabis in the commonwealth.
“We can legislate and create here together in a way that treats marijuana with the way it’s been enforced differently than alcohol, so let’s make sure when we are creating new laws that we are not just going back and slap it on alcohol crimes,” Harris said.
The panel was weighing Senate Bill 448, sponsored by Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, that would legalize cannabis sales starting on Jan. 1, 2025, and allow all medical marijuana companies already operating in Virginia and new businesses to begin at the same time.
Rouse’s proposal already advanced in a Senate subcommittee last week, before the full Senate Rehabilitation and Social Services backed it by a 10-5 vote on Friday, sending it to the Courts of Justice Committee, which was tasked with working out the legal provisions in the 175-page bill.
The panel on Wednesday changed the penalty for unlicensed sale of cannabis products from a Class 2 misdemeanor to a Class 1 misdemeanor, which is currently the charge for unlicensed alcohol sales.
“Adult sharing is fine, but if somebody sells it and they are not licensed, they ought to be guilty of the same offense as somebody that’s not licensed and sells alcohol,” said Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, a member of the committee. “If you have a nip joint and you’re selling drinks, you could be arrested. If you don’t have a license and you are selling marijuana, that’s illegal as well. Part of it is driving out the black market.”
If the bill is adopted, the unlicensed sale of cannabis products would be a Class 1 misdemeanor punishable by 30 days in jail for a second or subsequent offense. “I’m not a fan of mandatory minimums, but I think it needs to be identical [to alcohol],” said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, the committee chair.
Rouse’s legislation also creates a Class 6 misdemeanor penalty for the illegal cultivation, processing and manufacturing of cannabis — which is also aligned with the same offense related to alcohol.
Chelsea Higgs Wise, the executive director of Marijuana Justice, a Richmond-based nonprofit that works to legalize marijuana and achieve social equity, told the committee that she came to speak in support of this bill but changed her position because of the “new crimes” and mandatory minimums created by the legislation.
“We have not seen the ABC [laws] enforced on Black and brown communities the way that we have seen marijuana, and that is why we have these different approaches. To line these up directly with ABC enforcements is again not considering how this has been implemented in the past,” Wise said. “All of these barriers are still barriers to entry, and it is so important that as a committee we are not continuing to make more new crimes, particularly mandatory minimums.”
But Greg Habeeb, a former Republican member of the House of Delegates from Salem and an attorney and lobbyist for a number of cannabis interests who helped draft Rouse’s bill, called the provisions adopted by the committee “extraordinarily important” to put the proper regulations in place for licensees entering this market.
“If we are going to regulate this market to close off the black market, to address the public health issues we are seeing, we need this type of structure,” Habeeb said. He also underscored that the legislation does not create new crimes for end users of cannabis products. “We do not want more criminal charges to apply to users of this product. These amendments make a better bill, they put the proper regulations in place and hold licensees accountable.”
Alexander Macaulay, a lobbyist speaking on behalf of Jushi, a medical marijuana processor in Northern Virginia, warned the committee that allowing the outdoor cultivation of marijuana — which he called “a public time bomb” — would create a market that he said would be difficult to control.
“The states that have retail marijuana are moving away from outdoor grow,” Macaulay said. “It creates a lot of problems, it’s very hard to regulate. It’s very easy to pick up an outdoor grow facility and move it from one location to another, and that’s the reason why we think that outdoor grow should not be in this bill.”
And Todd Gathje of the Family Foundation of Virginia cautioned against what he called the dangers of marijuana in general.
“It was mentioned that marijuana is not as dangerous as Tylenol, but I would beg to differ,” Gathje said, referring to a recent incident where a California woman fatally stabbed her boyfriend more than 100 times during what prosecutors called a “cannabis-induced” psychosis.
“It says that he inhaled and went into a psychotic state. Shortly after, she picked up three different knives and slaughtered him, penetrating every major organ all over his body and face.
“This is a consequence that we have to be careful of,” Gathje said.
The committee approved the proposal by a 7-5 vote, with three members absent. The bill is now headed to the Senate Finance Committee for further discussion.
