RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — In 2021, Virginia became the first Southern state to legalize marijuana, adopting a policy change that allowed adults to possess and cultivate the drug.
But lawmakers didn’t fully enact a framework for recreational retail sales. Partisan gridlock thwarted any movement on the issue last year, and 2023 looks unlikely to be any different.
A Republican-led House panel defeated on Tuesday the Democrat-controlled Senate’s main surviving retail bill, which would have allowed sales to begin next year through existing medical marijuana dispensaries and at new retail businesses in communities that have historically been economically disadvantaged.
“We are kind of dragging our feet on establishing a retail market that could provide hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, could provide a tested product for adults and could be kept out of the hands of children,” Sen. Adam Ebbin, the bill’s sponsor said, just before the subcommittee defeated the measure.
With the sale of marijuana still illegal outside of medical dispensaries, the state finds itself in a holding pattern that some say has increased black-market marijuana sales and allowed unregulated, intoxicating hemp-derived products to proliferate and sicken people, including children. [Read More @ AP News]
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