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Virginia Adult-Use Cannabis Plans Halted Due to Failed Bills

February 28, 2023 Published by

Although Virginia adult-use cannabis sales were projected to begin no later than Jan. 1, 2024, the state’s adult-use cannabis sales plans have been stalled for the foreseeable future. 

Initially, adult-use cannabis was sent by a Democratic-controlled General Assembly to the desk of former Gov. Ralph Northam, who signed the legislation in April 2021. The law included a clause that required the General Assembly to reenact certain provisions, such as regulatory and licensing market structure. However in November 2021, the General Assembly shifted to Republican control, as did the House of Delegates, which ultimately led to the failure of provisional bills.

In January, a House of Delegates subcommittee rejected a Republican-sponsored cannabis bill proposed that would have allowed sales to begin prior to Jan. 1, 2024. Republican Delegate Keith Hodges, who sponsored the failed cannabis bill that would have created adult-use cannabis regulations, called the situation a “public health crisis” just before the bill was rejected on Jan. 25. “You can legally possess marijuana in the Commonwealth of Virginia, but you can’t legally purchase it,” Hodges said. “If we do nothing, we have a problem on our hands. We need to protect the citizens of Virginia from the illicit market.”

According to NORML Development Director and Virginia NORML Executive Director JM Pedini explained that the result of the vote “was entirely expected, but is still disappointing, and it spotlights House Republicans’ continued failure of leadership on cannabis policy,” Pedini said. “Without access to a regulated marketplace, consumers won’t know whether they’re getting a safe, tested product or one contaminated with potentially dangerous adulterants.”

“This vote is another huge disappointment for Virginians, the majority of whom favor swift access to retail sales,” Pedini continued. “Legislation providing regulatory oversight is the best way for the Commonwealth to protect cannabis consumers. By failing to take legislative action, lawmakers are electing to continue driving consumers to the unregulated, underground market.”

MJBizDaily suggests that the failure to pass these cannabis legislative efforts were in part because current Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin was pressuring legislators to defeat all cannabis bills.

On Feb. 14, Senate Bill 1133, which was sponsored by Sen. Adam Ebbin, was recommended to be passed on indefinitely. “It is legal to possess small amounts of cannabis, it is legal to grow your own cannabis,” Ebbin told the subcommittee before the bill was rejected. “Yet 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.”

During odd-numbered years, the Virginia General Assembly only meets for 30 days, and adjourned on Feb. 25, leaving legislators with no extra time to present an alternative.

Meanwhile in hemp, the Virginia House of Delegates (85 to 9 vote) and Senate of Virginia (23-17 vote) both passed a bill on Feb. 24 to create stricter regulations for Delta-8 hemp products. If passed, it would create new rules on labels, such as percentage and milligram amounts of THC in each Delate-8 product, as well as using any language that markets the products as a medical treatment of any kind. “I think this will go a long way in making sure that our communities are safe and that folks are buying what they purport to buy,” said House of Delegates Majority Leader Terry Kilgore.
The bill proposes that responsibility and management between the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority. Legislators such as Sen. Scott Surovell don’t believe that split control is the best course of action. “This is a first step toward a complete mess,” Surovell said. “And the reason we’re doing this is because somebody upstairs doesn’t want to talk about it.” The bill was recently sent to Gov. Youngkin, and is expected to be signed.

The post Virginia Adult-Use Cannabis Plans Halted Due to Failed Bills appeared first on High Times.

Massachusetts To Add Lessons on Weed Impairment to Driver’s Ed

December 14, 2022 Published by

Individuals enrolled in Massachusetts’ driver’s education program will receive a new lesson starting next year.

According to State House News Service, the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the program in the Bay State, “indicated Monday that is adopting the AAA curriculum, which is called ‘Shifting Gears: The Blunt Truth About Marijuana and Driving,’ in partnership with members of the Cannabis Control Commission.”

The outlet reports that the Registry of Motor Vehicles “plans a formal announcement on Friday at the Worcester Registry of Motor Vehicles,” and that it “indicated the curriculum will be adopted in January, and will update the driver education module to include research-based information on cannabis and an explanation of how tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, affects cognition, vision, reaction time, and perception of time and distance.”

Per local news station WCVB, the program will make Massachusetts “the first state in the nation with legal recreational marijuana to add lessons about cannabis impairment to driver’s education programs.”

“The current driver education module addressing impaired driving will be updated to include research-based information on cannabis, explaining how tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in marijuana, affects cognition, vision, reaction time, and perception of time and distance,” officials with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation said, as quoted by WCVB.

In a statement quoted by State House News Service, the Registry of Motor Vehicles said that next year’s driver’s education enrollees will represent “the first generation of driver education students to be licensed since cannabis became legal in Massachusetts, and AAA research shows that impaired driving crashes may increase and continue to injure and kill motorists and their passengers.”

Such curricula will likely become even more prevalent as more states enter the era of legalization and end prohibition on recreational pot use. 

Last year, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, signaled that he wanted to address the problem of stoned driving in the state, which legalized weed in 2016.

Baker threw his support behind legislation called the “Trooper Thomas Clardy Law,” which bears the name of the late Massachusetts State Trooper Thomas L. Clardy, who died while making a traffic stop in 2016 after his vehicle was hit by a motorist who had THC in his blood.

“This legislation aims to make the Commonwealth’s roads safer and save lives, and we are grateful to the Clardy family for offering their family’s name and support for this legislation, which will help us avoid impaired driving incidents in the future,” Baker said in a statement at the time. “This bill will provide law enforcement officers with more rigorous drug detection training and will strengthen the legal process by authorizing the courts to acknowledge that the active ingredient in marijuana can and does impair motorists. The bill draws on thoughtful recommendations from a broad cross-section of stakeholders, and we look forward to working with our legislative colleagues to pass this bill and make our roads safer.”

But the legislation went up in smoke in the Massachusetts legislature earlier this year after some Democratic lawmakers expressed concern over the reliability of the testing devices.

Officials in Virginia are currently considering their own potential mechanisms to rein in the problem of marijuana-impaired driving, after the Commonwealth legalized recreational cannabis use last year, becoming the first state in the U.S. south to do so.

And in New York, which legalized marijuana last year and is currently preparing to open its regulated weed retailers, officials are said to be “scrambling” to find a reliable marijuana DUI test. 

The post Massachusetts To Add Lessons on Weed Impairment to Driver’s Ed appeared first on High Times.

Virginia Officials Consider Measures To Reduce Stoned Driving

December 1, 2022 Published by

Officials in Virginia are exploring ways to deter drivers from getting behind the wheel after getting stoned, the latest effort by the commonwealth to smooth out its new adult-use cannabis law.

The Virginian-Pilot reports that the “the Virginia Crime Commission — an arm of the General Assembly tasked with studying issues of criminal law and making recommendations — [has] discussed some potential steps police and sheriff’s offices can use to crack down on driving while high,” and that the “commission is expected to meet Dec. 5 to draft their proposals for the legislative session that begins in January.”

“One thing under consideration at the commission’s Nov. 16 meeting: changing state law to allow roadside screening devices in which officers and deputies can have a driver swab his or her cheek in order to gather saliva to test for marijuana and other drugs,” the outlet reported this week. 

“Virginia officials said the ‘oral fluid tests’ under consideration to detect marijuana intoxication are similar to a ‘preliminary breath test’ — a roadside test for alcohol. The test results, while not admissible in court, can help determine when the cannabis was consumed, and can be combined with other factors to get probable cause for extensive blood testing,” the publication continued. 

Kristen Howard, the executive director of the Virginia Crime Commission, told the Virginian-Pilot that officers can “swab the inside of someone’s mouth, and you get a positive or negative and it just gives you some indicators.”

“It’s designed to hone in on the recentness of use — how many hours ago you used this drug,” Howard explained.

The moves come within a month of a survey from the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority (CCA), which showed that a high number of Virginians are comfortable toking and driving. 

According to the survey, roughly 23% reported consuming pot in the past three months and about 14% of drivers in the state said that they have driven high several times in the past year. 

The survey also showed that a third believe marijuana improves their ability to drive safely. 

Virginia officials sounded the alarm on the survey results.

“These results are worrying and underscore the General Assembly was right to direct the CCA to undertake a safe driving campaign,” said John Keohane, a board chair of the Cannabis Control Authority.

Jeremy Preiss, the CCA’s Acting Head and Chief Officer for Regulatory, Policy, and External Affairs, said that the agency must make the issue a priority.

“As a public safety and public health agency, the CCA currently has no greater priority than creating a well-funded, aggressive, and sustained campaign aimed at reducing the incidence of marijuana-impaired driving,” Preiss said. 

Virginia legalized recreational cannabis last year, becoming the first state in the south to do so. 

But that came under a Democratic governor, Ralph Northam. Republicans took back the governor’s mansion last year when Glenn Youngkin was elected. 

Youngkin said from the start that he has no interest in rolling back the marijuana law, but his election––as well as Republicans winning back control of the state House of Delegates––has stymied its implementation.

The Democratic-controlled state Senate passed a bill earlier this year to fast-track the launch of recreational pot sales, but the legislation was rejected in the House.  

Prior to taking office earlier this year, Youngkin spoke about his vision for the new cannabis program.

“When it comes to commercialization, I think there is a lot of work to be done. I’m not against it, but there’s a lot of work to be done,” Youngkin said. “There are some nonstarters, including the forced unionization that’s in the current bill. There have been concerns expressed by law enforcement in how the gap in the laws can actually be enforced. Finally, there’s a real need to make sure that we aren’t promoting an anti-competitive industry. I do understand that there are preferences to make sure that all participants in the industry are qualified to do the industry well.”

The post Virginia Officials Consider Measures To Reduce Stoned Driving appeared first on High Times.

Medical Weed Cards No Longer Required in Virginia Starting July 1

June 24, 2022 Published by

A week from today, medical cannabis patients in Virginia will no longer need to present a card at a dispensary in order to obtain their prescribed products.

That is thanks to a bill that was signed into law in April that lifted the requirement “for patients to register with the state’s Board of Pharmacy for a license,” according to local news outlet WRIC.

But, per the text of the legislation, the new law still maintains “the requirement that patients obtain written certification from a health care provider for medical cannabis,” while also directing the Board of Pharmacy to “promulgate numerous regulations related to pharmaceutical processors.”

The new law, which officially takes effect on July 1, is aimed at improving the efficiency of the process for patients to obtain medical cannabis in Virginia.

Once it takes effect next week, those patients will be able to obtain their cannabis products from stores as soon as they get a written certificate from a health care provider.

Along with “letting them avoid waiting for a license from the board, a process that can take months, the law will also allow patients to not have to pay a $50 application fee,” WRIC reported.

The measure was signed into law more than two months ago by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican serving in his first term.

In addition to removing the registration requirement, the law also “amends the definition of ‘cannabis oil’ by removing the requirement that only oil from industrial hemp be used in the formulation of cannabis oil.”

Cannabis advocates celebrate the bill becoming law in April, saying it will provide a needed remedy for thousands of Virginia medical weed patients. According to WRIC, data from “Virginia’s Board of Pharmacy shows nearly 47,000 total registered patients and thousands of pending applications, a backlog that has forced the board to hire new workers.”

“These legislative improvements will bring great relief to the thousands of Virginians waiting to access the medical cannabis program,” said JM Pedini, NORML’s Development Director and the Executive Director of Virginia NORML. “We hear from dozens of Virginians each week who are struggling with the registration process and frustrated by the 60-day wait to receive their approval from the Board of Pharmacy.”

Virginia’s medical cannabis law began in 2017, although it initially only permitted “patients suffering from intractable epilepsy to use some types of cannabis oil with a doctor’s certification,” according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

The program has since expanded to include other cannabis products such as edibles and bud.

Last year, Virginia went a step further when it legalized recreational cannabis use for adults, becoming the first state in the southern U.S. to do so.

But that law took effect under a Democratic governor and a Democratic-controlled legislature, and it also launched without a regulated market for cannabis sales in place.

As WRIC put it, that meant that “the commonwealth’s medical cannabis program became the only legal market for people.”

Youngkin took office earlier this year, saying that he had no intention of overturning the law that allowed personal possession, but the outlook for retail sales still appears uncertain.

“When it comes to commercialization, I think there is a lot of work to be done. I’m not against it, but there’s a lot of work to be done,” Youngkin said in an interview not long before he took office. “There are some nonstarters, including the forced unionization that’s in the current bill. There have been concerns expressed by law enforcement in how the gap in the laws can actually be enforced. Finally, there’s a real need to make sure that we aren’t promoting an anti-competitive industry. I do understand that there are preferences to make sure that all participants in the industry are qualified to do the industry well.”

The post Medical Weed Cards No Longer Required in Virginia Starting July 1 appeared first on High Times.