Virginia stands at a critical moment in cannabis legalization. We have a chance to build a safe, equitable and responsible market — or we can repeat the mistakes of the past by ignoring the latest health data. The current proposal to merge the newly established Cannabis Control Authority with the existing Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control represents a dangerous institutional move that jeopardizes public well-being and threatens to derail our goals of equity and public health.
The question before our lawmakers is simple: Will we regulate cannabis based on a model of failure, or a future of public health and equity?
The popular, early legalization slogan was, “Regulate like alcohol.” However, what health scholars now recognize is that alcohol regulation, as practiced in the United States, has been a profound public health failure. The February 13th New York Times letters to the editors included two statements, one from a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and another from a director and a vice president at Partnership to End Addiction. Both letters state that alcohol regulation is not a model to emulate for cannabis. Alcohol-related consequences remain one of the leading preventable causes of death nationwide. This is not for a lack of enforcement; it is a fundamental misalignment of priorities.
Most alcohol regulators’ core mission is revenue generation and license enforcement — a dynamic known as “regulatory capture.” Alcohol regulators, focused on the market’s logic, consistently fail to track or account for the human cost of their industry. By reviewing this data locally and nationally, it is undeniable that integrating ABC with the CCA will not align with Virginia’s stated legalization values of public health.
A national study recently found that a staggering 65% of alcohol regulatory agencies do not even mention public health in their mission statements. In Virginia, the situation is even more alarming: not only does the ABC exclude public health from its mission statement, but the 2025 Virginia ABC annual financial report mentioned public health exactly zero times. Their focus is on the bottom line, not the public good.
This prioritization is reflected in their enforcement activities. Alcohol regulators nationwide were found to be 40% more likely to mention collaborations with law enforcement than with public health agencies. They prioritize license crackdowns over a balanced approach that includes proactive public health initiatives.
In stark contrast, agencies specifically created to regulate cannabis, versus alcohol regulators, are twice as likely to collaborate with public health agencies. This shows that when given a mandate focused on a new, controlled substance, regulators naturally gravitate toward a balance of market oversight and consumer safety. Merging the CCA into the ABC destroys this potential. The two agencies can still share services as separate entities, but merging the two should set off alarms.
This is in part why, in 2020, the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission report suggested the creation of a new, independent Cannabis Authority. Its purpose was to produce a better balance between industry beneficiaries and the critical goals of equity and public health. By forcing a merger, we are systematically dismantling that balance. We risk creating a system that will inevitably lead to disproportionate enforcement — a mechanism that disproportionately harms communities already targeted by a legacy of racist marijuana enforcement — while simultaneously neglecting our public health and equity goals.
Marijuana Justice has long championed a safe and equitable cannabis market, one that proactively prevents market concentration and ensures equitable inclusion. We are proud to see legislation moving forward with safety and righting past wrongs as guiding principles. But this progress will be nullified if CCA is mandated to co-regulate with a department institutionally incapable of prioritizing public health and equity.
I urge our lawmakers to stop this dangerous merger. Legislate the Cannabis Control Authority the independent power it was intended to have.
Let us reject a model of failure and LEGALIZE VIRGINIA RIGHT by choosing a future of public health and responsible regulation for Virginia by keeping the ABC out of cannabis.
Chelsea Higgs Wise is executive director of Marijuana Justice.
