Virginia’s marijuana laws explained: See our FAQs on the state’s cannabis laws.
I was in Radford recently and noticed a brightly colored store on Main Street that advertised itself as “Radford’s Premiere Adult Culture Shop.”
Curious what that was, I went inside to check it out. I was greeted first by the unmistakable smell of marijuana and second by a friendly clerk. When I asked what this store was, he said it was an “adult share” store. Virginia law doesn’t allow the retail sale of cannabis, but he said if I bought “a sticker,” he could share some cannabis. He then showed off four vials with samples inside and a price chart, which listed several strains of cannabis, some of which I can’t repeat in polite company. I asked what the THC level of that cannabis is — THC being tetrahydrocannabinol, the ingredient that gets you high. The clerk said he couldn’t say; whether that’s because he didn’t know or because it’s illegal to sell cannabis with THC higher than 0.3% was unclear.
I declined the offer to buy “a sticker” and later contacted the store’s owner to see how this practice squares with the opinion issued by Attorney General Jason Miyares that says such “adult share” operations are a violation of Virginia law.
I have yet to get a response.
I did go online to investigate the “Grease Monkey” strain of cannabis that was offered. The website Canna Connection advises: “Grease Monkey is a highly relaxing cannabis strain championed by recreational and medical users alike. With a THC content ranging from 16% to 30%, it’s a potent choice, even for experienced smokers. This strain is not for the faint of heart, as it packs a heavy punch that leaves users deeply relaxed, and potentially quite sleepy.”
Even that low end is 53.3 times the legal limit in Virginia.
This is not unusual. All across Southwest Virginia, we now have stores openly selling marijuana. I’ve written about such stores in Abingdon, Marion, Radford and Westlake Corner in Franklin County near Smith Mountain Lake. After I wrote about the first three, Miyares sent warning letters to them advising them to stop or face fines. The Radford store — not the one described here, another one — has closed, but the ones in Abingdon and Marion are still open. The store at Westlake Corner has stopped selling cannabis, even though I’m not aware it’s received a warning letter.
It’s not my intention to be the attorney general’s unofficial narc, but rather to highlight the on-the-ground effects of Virginia’s unusual policy decisions. We are the only state in the country where it’s legal to possess small amounts of cannabis but illegal to sell the same. Nevertheless, the marketplace has found creative ways to try to get around that prohibition, with “adult share” setups being the most common. Law enforcement does not seem to particularly care, especially now that the penalties for cannabis law violations have been reduced. Cannabis just isn’t a priority, not when there’s fentanyl out on the streets.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin said earlier this year he didn’t want “a cannabis shop on every corner” and later vetoed a bill passed by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly that would have legalized retail cannabis. It doesn’t really seem to matter. We have cannabis shops anyway, maybe not on every corner, but visible enough that they’re out on Main Street in some communities — and, in Radford, within walking distance of Radford University. This cannabis just isn’t being tested and taxed the way it would be in a legal market, with the result that consumers have no idea what they’re buying. We’ve had some of this cannabis tested and often found it’s moldy and contains high levels of metals. This is the marijuana equivalent of moonshine being sold openly, except we don’t know whether the white lightning was brewed lovingly in a proper still or cooked up in a hurry in the radiator of a ’75 Ford Pinto. Realistically, this situation is going to continue until the state legalizes retail sales of cannabis because there seems no appetite for the kind of crackdown it would take to drive cannabis sales back underground.
I look forward to hearing our 2025 candidates for governor and the House of Delegates talk about how they’d handle this situation. Is the status quo OK? If not, how would they change it?
That brings us to this: Every version of a legal retail market bill in Virginia has included a provision for a local referendum on whether to allow retail sales. Some are “opt out,” some are “opt in,” but they all involve the cannabis equivalent of a “liquor by the drink” referendum.
That raises the question of which localities would actually approve such a referendum. The recent referendums in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota on recreational cannabis provide an opportunity to try to make some guesses. I’ve done this before with other states, but it’s always good to have updated information.
All three states voted against retail sales, although in different ways. The Dakotas both had a majority vote “no.” Florida had a majority vote “yes,” but the law there required a 60% yes vote to pass and instead just 55.9% did.
What I’ve found in other states is that the size of the vote for Donald Trump is a good gauge of how localities vote on cannabis. That proves true in Florida as well. When I compare the vote in the presidential race with the vote on cannabis, here’s what I find:
- If a county voted for Kamala Harris, it voted yes on weed. This has been true in every state where I’ve conducted this analysis. A Democratic county is automatically a pro-weed county.
- If a county voted in the 50% range for Trump, it probably voted for legal weed. In Florida, nine counties in the 50% range for Trump voted yes, two voted no. That puts the odds of a pro-weed vote at 81.8%.
- If a county voted in the 60% range for Trump, it also probably voted for legal weed. In Florida, 14 counties in the 60% range for Trump voted yes, four voted no — 77.7%.
- If a county voted in the 70% range for Trump, the odds of it backing legal weed are absolutely split: nine voted for, nine voted against.
- If a county voted in the 80% range for Trump, it voted no on weed, without exception.
This gives us a good guide. Now let’s apply that to localities in Virginia and see what happens.
I'll confess that the legend here is a little confusing, but that's just the software I'm using. The key thing to know is that the greener a locality is, the more likely it is to approve retail cannabis, based on the Florida vote. The localities in yellow, which voted 80% or more for Trump, forget it — no retail cannabis there. The localities in the darkest green, where Trump took less than 50% of the vote, are all but guaranteed to approve retail cannabis. The ones in between are where the action will be.
Several things to note:
- Voting for retail cannabis in general, as people in Florida did, is different from voting for a store in your specific community, so it's possible some of those light green places may balk at the reality of retail cannabis.
- In Florida, in those 70%-79% localities that split on weed, there wasn't much of a pattern. Highlands County, which voted 70.1% for Trump, voted no on weed. However, Okeechobee County, which voted 76.7% for Trump, voted yes. By the Okeechobee standard, even Washington County in Virginia (76.07% for Trump) might vote for weed.
My big takeaway, though, is that, based on the Florida standard, virtually all of Virginia — with the exception of some mountain counties in Southwest Virginia, as opposed to the valley counties along Interstate 81 — might approve weed stores.
Second, in Southwest Virginia, I'd expect the focus to be on Bristol and Norton. Those localities had the lowest Trump votes (69.39% in Bristol, 71.41% in Norton), which on this, scale positions them to be the most likely to approve retail weed.
If this scale is accurate, it seems likely that retail marijuana stores would be pretty ubiquitous in Virginia.
Whether that scale turns out to be accurate, well, we have no way of knowing right now. But we can look at some other states for context.
The Dakotas offer the most encouragement to those on the anti-cannabis side.
In North Dakota, the only localities to vote in favor of cannabis were two counties that voted Democratic — plus three others where the Trump vote was in the 50% range. Then there was one odd county where the Trump vote was 83% but the vote for weed was yes. No other locality in North Dakota where Trump's vote ran in the 60% or higher range voted yes.
If we discount that Williams County exception, and apply the rest of the North Dakota standard to Virginia, we get a very different map of likely outcomes.
If Virginians voted like North Dakota, rather than Florida, then no community west of Radford would approve retail cannabis.
South Dakota offers an even more discouraging prospect on cannabis. The vote there was pretty clear.
Only one county that voted for Trump voted for legal weed: Minnehaha County, where Trump took 55.2%. On the other hand, that was the only county in the state where the Trump vote was in the 50% range, so maybe the South Dakota standard is really just the North Dakota standard.
We have one other comparison we ought to make, though. In last year's cannabis vote in Ohio, many conservative Appalachian counties in the Buckeye State voted for weed. I called this the “Copperhead Road” effect. They'd be counties most analogous to our Southwest Virginia counties. Let's revisit them now that we have some presidential results.
Ohio has 32 counties that are classified as Appalachian by the Appalachian Regional Commission. I realize that's often more of a political distinction than a cultural one, but that's the one I'll use. Of those 32 counties, all but one voted for Trump. The exception was Athens County, home to Ohio University. However, last year, precisely half of those counties voted in favor of legal weed. When we look this year at those 16 pro-weed, pro-Trump counties, we find some Trump vote shares in the 50% and 60% range — but they also range as high as 78.0% in Meigs County, 78.9% in Vinton County and, get this, 80.4% in Brown County.
True, there were other counties with lower Trump vote shares that voted against weed, but these exceptions suggest that many Trump voters are pretty open-minded about weed. If we apply that Brown County, Ohio, standard in Virginia, then every locality on that Florida standard map above might vote for retail weed except those in yellow — although Dickenson County and Grayson County come close to tipping into the pro-weed range.
Now, all that's politics and political speculation. Meanwhile, we have the market realities on the ground that show that retail cannabis, legal or otherwise, is thriving even in some places that might otherwise vote “no.” The cannabis consumers there might be very happy not to have Virginia legalize retail cannabis (with a local option provision), lest their easy supply gets cut off.
How the French see Virginia
A French television network sent a crew to Virginia to report on the presidential election. In Friday's edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, I'll write about what the French had to say.
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