You’re going to get a weed store near you.
You might even get it by next year this time.
Those are the two big takeaways from the bill taking shape in Richmond that would legalize retail sales of cannabis in Virginia:
- When (not if) the state legalizes those sales, stores will be allowed in every locality. There will be no provision for localities to ban them, as had been contemplated in previous iterations of the bill.
- The first sales could start as early as Nov. 1, 2026.
None of this is law yet. There’s not even a formal bill introduced in the General Assembly yet. However, there is a Joint Commission to Oversee the Transition of the Commonwealth into a Cannabis Retail Market — no snickering over the name — that’s been meeting to work out the details of a retail market for what old-timers used to call marijuana. On Tuesday, the commission held its final meeting of the year, and the last one before the 2026 General Assembly session, to go over what it would like to see in a bill. Those are the two big changes from previous versions, and both appear to have achieved a consensus among both Democrats and Republicans on the panel.
For those who thought cannabis was already legal in Virginia, you’re half right. The Democratic-controlled General Assembly legalized possession of small amounts of reefer in 2021 and planned to come back the next year to work out the rules for stores to sell it. What the Democrats didn’t count on was losing the election that year, both control of the House of Delegates and the governorship. When Democrats regained control of the House in 2023, they still faced a Republican governor — Glenn Youngkin — who had no interest in legalizing jazz cabbage. Twice the legislature passed legalization bills; twice the governor inked a veto on them.
Now we’ve had another election, which Democrats have won — and Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger has said she’d sign a bill. In anticipation of that, the Joint Commission has been at work. The starting point was last year’s bill that Youngkin vetoed. What happened Tuesday was that the commission, meeting in Richmond, reviewed 43 tweaks to the bill, some major, some minor. Other changes may come as the measure moves through the General Assembly in early 2026 but it seems certain that the legislature will pass some kind of legalization bill and the odds seem high (every pun intended) that it will look much like what the commission reviewed Tuesday.
Here are the highlights:
Retail sales would be legal statewide
Of the 23 states that allow retail sales of cannabis, 20 have some kind of local option provision whereby a locality can ban weed stores. (Maryland, Minnesota and New Mexico are the three exceptions). Previous versions in Virginia have included plans for a local referendum, similar to the ones we sometimes see for liquor-by-the-drink. This version does away with that. Three commission members previewed this in an opinion piece published Monday in Cardinal News.
“By allowing opt-out, we’re really allowing opting into the black market,” Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County and the commission chair, said Tuesday. “So we won’t have any dry counties the way there is with alcohol.”
The rationale behind legalization is that people are buying and selling weed now, just on the black market. The goal here is to move those sales into a legal, regulated (and taxed) marketplace. Over the past two years, we at Cardinal have documented multiple examples of rogue stores that have popped up where you can openly buy weed, no matter what the law says. At one time you could drive from Montgomery County to the Tennessee line and every locality you drove through had at least one weed store. (The last time I checked on the one in Marion, it had closed.) In tiny Weber City in Scott County, there are four such outlets, all doing a booming business from customers driving across the state line from Tennessee. The marketplace has already determined there’s demand, even in some of the most politically conservative parts of the state. (See our previous report.)
I’ve run multiple calculations, based on cannabis votes elsewhere, to try to estimate which localities in Virginia would approve cannabis and which ones would not. While the details varied, the big picture was always the same: Southwest and Southside localities would likely vote “no.” Under this version, they won’t get that option. That means some of the most valuable licenses to sell retail cannabis might be in border counties in Southwest and Southside because none of our neighbors there — North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky or West Virginia — have legal cannabis. Those stores in Weber City already demonstrate how lucrative that could be.
We’ll have 350 stores statewide
That’s how many retail licenses will be available. For comparison, there are 402 Alcoholic Beverage Control stores in Virginia.
The commission envisions no specific geographic allocation for these licenses, but one provision discussed Tuesday was aimed at preventing a concentration of stores. It proposed a minimum distance of 1 mile between stores; when that section was read, some in the audience erupted with objections. (The crowd appeared to be very pro-pot.) State Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, also expressed reservations about the 1-mile requirement. “I knew that would be a tough one,” Krizek said. “Every delegate district would have two to three, not 20,” he guessed.
So, no, there won’t be a weed store on every corner, although some advocates might think that’s a fine idea. I can imagine siting might get interesting in some places: Who gets the prime location downtown? Or along Atlantic Avenue in Virginia Beach? With some other businesses — restaurants, for instance — we let the marketplace sort that out. Here, it will be the Cannabis Control Authority that decides who gets which license for where. “The CCA is going to have a lot of work,” Krizek said in an interview following the meeting.
Stores would also not be allowed “within 1,000 feet of places of religious worship, hospitals, schools, playgrounds, child day programs, substance use disorder treatment facilities, or government facilities.” Of note: The cannabis store that once was in Marion was right beside a church.
Stores may be intentionally hard to find
Krizek said the intent is for retail cannabis stores to mimic the look of medical cannabis dispensaries, with tinted windows and no cannabis leaves in their signage. And no flashing neon, either. I drove past the medical dispensary in Salem multiple times before I realized it was there (I also wasn’t looking for it, either, just for the record). The facility on West Main Street gives no indication of what kind of business it is. It’s one of those “if you know, you know” kind of places but no advertising leads you there. The proposed legislation says signs for cannabis stores must not “draw undue attention to the facility.” In other words, it can’t look like the now-closed Good Vibes store in Radford, where I once bought some cannabis that we sent off to be tested to demonstrate that these places were operating openly.
Weed deliveries will be allowed
Don’t want to go out to shop for weed? The proposed legislation would let weed stores deliver to your door. The bill would create a special license for cannabis delivery people. Prediction: DoorDash will love this because if you’re ordering out for weed, you’re soon going to have the munchies and will want to order out for pizza, too.
State regulators will decide how many licenses are necessary for other parts of the cannabis supply chain
Think of the cannabis business this way: The plants are grown in cultivation facilities (which are envisioned as indoor operations, not open fields). Then the harvest is processed at a processing facility. Then finally the weed goes to the store to be sold.
The commission envisions a maximum of 10 large-scale cultivation facilities (defined as 45,000 square feet to 70,000 square feet) but leaves it up to the Cannabis Control Authority to decide how many licenses should be awarded for smaller grow-houses and processing facilities. Previous iterations of the bill tried to write those numbers into law. There would also be licenses for cannabis nurseries that could start plants and then sell them to growhouses.
The licensing is set up to avoid consolidation
The commission’s intent is to design a market dominated by small businesses. “We’re really trying to make sure there are no monopolies, that there is no Big Tobacco” with Big Cannabis instead, Krizek said. The proposed legislation would limit license-holders to no more than five stores. Those holding a license for a cultivation facility would be limited to just one large growhouse.
How licenses will be awarded is still being worked out
One of the points of controversy with previous cannabis bills has been who gets licenses. Democrats have wanted a “social equity” approach that would see licenses as compensation for those targeted for cannabis offenses in the past; Republicans have seen that as rewarding lawbreakers. This proposal sets up a special class of licensees called “impact licensees.” To qualify, an applicant would need to meet four of seven criteria:
1. Someone who has been previously convicted of a marijuana offense (including a felony).
2. Someone who is the parent, child or spouse of such an offender.
3. Someone who has lived in a community that the authority deems “disproportionately policed for marijuana crimes between the years 2015 and 2025.”
4. Someone who attended school for at least five years “in a historically economically disadvantaged community.”
5. Someone who has received a Pell Grant or “attended for at least two years a college or university at which at least 30 percent of the students, on average, are eligible for a Federal Pell Grant.” According to the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia, that would qualify those who have attended George Mason, Norfolk State, Old Dominion, Radford, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia State.
6. A military veteran.
7. Someone who has qualified for financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a distressed farmer in the last five years.
Most of those provisions were in last year’s bill, but some were modified by the commission and the seventh one, about farmers, was added as a way to make the bill more rural-friendly.
What wasn’t discussed is what percentage of licensees will be “impact licensees.” Krizek said in an interview he hoped it would be 50% but that has yet to be worked out.
One of the balancing acts the commission has had to deal with are the competing interests of existing medical marijuana companies (who have the expertise but are seen by some as big business), hemp growers who fear their business in non-intoxicating plants will get wiped out by intoxicating cannabis, and those who want to create a space for new entrepreneurs.
The proposed legislation would require holders of medical marijuana licenses to pay $10 million to apply for retail cannabis licenses — a provision that medical marijuana companies surely won’t like. There are also some provisions aimed at existing hemp licensees who want to transition to cannabis. If you’re really into the details, you can read the proposed changes and compare them to the original bill.
The goal is to start sales Nov. 1, 2026
That start date drew some criticism from cannabis advocates who worried it was too soon — and might give a preference to bigger operators over smaller ones. One addition to the bill is a provision to create up to 100 “microbusiness” licenses for businesses to sell directly to customers as soon as the market opens on Nov. 1; that would involve awarding those licenses by Sept. 1.
These licenses are intended for registered hemp growers, farmers and those who qualify for the “impact licenses,” partly as a way to help hemp growers who fear that legal retail sales will drive them out of business and partly as a way for those impact licensees to raise capital so they can apply for permanent licenses. These temporary licenses will expire once there are at least 100 retail stores operating statewide or two years have elapsed, whichever comes first.
Licensees would have to promise not to oppose union organizing
A new provision would require “all marijuana establishment license applicants to have entered into a labor peace agreement with a bona fide labor organization.” Cornell University’s law school website defines a “labor peace agreement” as “a contract between an employer and a union, in which the employer agrees to be neutral during a union organizing campaign and not interfere with union organizing.”
When I showed this provision to some Republican legislators, let’s just say they were not excited. Democrats feel quite differently. “This happens in a lot of blue states,” Krizek said, noting that this provision was very important to Democratic constituencies. In some states, cannabis workers are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
Taxes would be less than in other states
One aspect of legal retail sales is that they can be taxed, but other states have shown they can be taxed too much. One reason that some states have had difficulty reducing the black market is that taxes have made legal weed so expensive that customers have stuck with their neighborhood dealers. The Tax Foundation says that Washington state imposes a 37% tax on retail weed sales. Montana’s tax is 20%. Most other states are in the teens, often the high teens.
The commission envisions a tax rate in Virginia of 8%, with the option for localities to add a local tax of up to 3.5%, for a total of 11.5%. “We want to be competitive with Maryland,” Krizek said. Maryland’s cannabis tax started at 9% but this year raised its rate to 12.5% with no local tax allowed.
The lowest tax rate for cannabis is Missouri, which has a 6% state tax and the option of a 3% local tax.
How much revenue would this generate? That’s hard to guess. New Jersey is slightly more populous than Virginia and is projected to generate $1.3 billion in sales this year. However, Missouri, a state with just 60% the population of New Jersey, is projected to generate $1.6 billion in sales. The industry news site MJBizDaily faults “the stunted development of New Jersey’s cannabis market” and says it’s “the result of local and state policy decisions that unduly burden licensed marijuana businesses while ignoring, and often facilitating, the proliferation of illicit operators.” (Conservatives may not love cannabis, but they’d love many of the cannabis news sites that regularly rail against high taxes and overregulation.) New Jersey also is an “opt-out” state where most communities have banned retail cannabis establishments.
Just to have some sort of guide, if Virginia sold as much weed as New Jersey, that would generate $104 million in state taxes and up to $45.5 million in local taxes. If we sold as much as Missouri, that would be $128 million in state taxes and up to $56 million in local taxes.
The commission removed a provision that would create a special tax for cannabis paraphernalia, so such things would only be subject to regular sales. Once we had calls for “no car tax.” Think of this as “no bong tax.”
More work to be done
The actual bill won’t be ready for several weeks yet. Even after something passes, there’s still more work to be done, Krizek stressed. Two provisions the commission discussed Tuesday signaled some of the controversies to come. One was a provision that the commission study whether the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority should be involved in cannabis enforcement. Several speakers from the audience objected to ABC getting involved, favoring a regulatory body solely focused on cannabis. Another was a provision “to study the establishment and implementation of on-site consumption licenses and microbusiness cannabis event permits, such as farmers markets.” Ebbin, in particular, objected to the prospect of “cannabis event permits” at farmers markets on the grounds that cannabis should be tightly controlled and that didn’t sound like tight control.
Some in the audience booed.
“See, the public likes it,” Krizek quipped.
“The public is not always right,” Ebbin said.
That matter was put off for further discussion.
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