January 13, 2025
By Ben Adlin
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) emphasized during his State of the Commonwealth address that he’s not interested in cooperating with lawmakers to legalize marijuana sales in the state, claiming that doing so would hurt children, worsen mental health and increase violent crime.
“Strong communities work to prevent harmful drug use,” the governor said during the speech on Monday.
Use, possession and limited cultivation of cannabis by adults are already legal in Virginia, the result of a Democrat-led proposal approved by lawmakers in 2021. But Republicans, after winning control of the House and governor’s office later that year, subsequently blocked the required reenactment of a regulatory framework for retail sales. Since then, illicit stores have sprung up to meet consumer demand.
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Supporters of regulating commercial sales in the state say the move would not create a cannabis market in Virginia but instead regulate the state’s existing illicit market, which some estimates value at nearly $3 billion. But Youngkin has rejected the idea, issuing a veto of a legal sales measure passed by lawmakers after Democrats retook control of the legislature last year.
“Everyone knows where I stand on establishing a retail marijuana market,” Youngkin said in his speech. “Let’s work together on other issues where we can find common ground.”
The comments come just days after Del. Paul Krizek (D) and Sen. Aaron Rouse (D), who helped craft last year’s marijuana sales bill, reintroduced legislation that would regulate the commonwealth’s marijuana market and allow legal commercial cannabis sales to begin.
Krizek told Marijuana Moment that he expects Youngkin would veto the new bill.
“The governor’s made it very clear that he will veto it, but nonetheless, it’s important,” he said last month of the renewed push at regulation. “It’s important we have a marketplace with safe, tested and taxed products.”
Youngkin, however, pointed to a list of negative consequences that he claimed were related to regulated marijuana sales.
“We know that states with retail markets have seen significant negative impacts on children and adolescent health and safety, increased gang activity and violent crime, significant deterioration in metal health, decreased road safety and significant costs associated with the marijuana retail market that far exceed the perverse benefit of tax revenue,” he said in the speech.
Some members of law enforcement have complained that illegal activity around marijuana has become a major contributor to violent crime in the state. Rouse, the Senate sponsor of the legal sales proposal, has responded that legalization would in fact reduce violence and illegal sales.
“Our young people are killing each other over something where we could attempt to mitigate those interactions by regulating marijuana,” Rouse said last year.
JM Pedini, development director for the advocacy group NORML and executive director for Virginia NORML, pushed back on comments by Youngkin after the address that marijuana is “bad for youth.”
“What’s actually ‘bad for youth’ is leaving the control of Virginia’s marijuana market to illicit operators,” they said. “Data gleaned from decades of real world regulatory experience with cannabis in the U.S. clearly show that states which take marijuana off the street corner and place it behind an age-verified counter see a drop in youth use. In fact, nationwide, youth cannabis use has reached historic lows.”
According to a federally funded survey published last month, rates of teen use continue to decline as more states legalize the substance. The poll also found a significant drop in perceptions by youth that cannabis is easy to access in 2024 despite the widening adult-use marketplace.
Cannabis use among eighth, 10th and 12 graders is now lower than before the first states started enacting adult-use legalization laws in 2012. For cannabis reform advocates, the findings reinforce the argument that enacting regulated marijuana markets for adults—with safeguards in place such as ID checks at secure retailers—ultimately deters youth access.
As for the governor’s suggesting to lawmakers that they work on pursuing issues on which they have “common ground,” Pedini replied: “Virginians have found common ground on cannabis legalization, and it is deeply troubling that Governor Youngkin still fails to recognize that.”
Jason Blanchette, president of the Virginia Cannabis Association, recently told Marijuana Moment he thinks it’s important lawmakers take up the matter this year even if Youngkin is prepared to issue another veto.
“We’ve got one more year of Youngkin, and then if we can get it out, get it on his desk, that’ll be two times the Democrats have gotten the exact same bill through,” he told Marijuana Moment, referring to the fact that the term-limited governor’s time in office ends early next year. “The feeling is that’ll set some very strong precedent for the next governor.”
Last year, Youngkin greeted even more minor marijuana reforms coldly. He vetoed another proposal, for example, that would have prevented the state from considering marijuana use alone as evidence of child abuse or neglect despite the measure winning unanimous or near-unanimous approval in votes on the Senate floor.
Following that action, Del. Rae Cousins (D), the bill’s sponsor, accused the governor of “turning his back on the needs of our children and neglecting their well-being by encouraging the courts to move forward with unnecessary family separations.”
Separately, last April, Virginia Health Commissioner Karen Shelton said her agency had received a sufficient number of reports of minors getting sick from cannabis products that the commonwealth would create a “special surveillance system” to track the issue.
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