Spanberger signed HB 26 and SB 62 the same week she vetoed the retail market. Here is what the law actually does, who it covers, and why people who should qualify are already at risk of being left behind.
Virginia’s cannabis resentencing law is real and people will benefit from it. HB 26 and SB 62, signed May 15, 2026, create a genuine pathway for more than 1,000 Virginians still incarcerated or under supervision for conduct that has been legal in this state since 2021. That matters.
What is not real is the idea that this is simple, clean, or guaranteed. “Signed into law” and “people actually getting relief” are two different things, and the history of how this bill almost got gutted tells you exactly where the gaps are going to show up.
What the Law Does
This is resentencing, not expungement. The conviction stays on your record. What the law does is require a judge to look at your sentence again under today’s legal framework and decide whether it should be reduced or modi>ed. The record does not disappear. The sentence gets reconsidered.
The law takes eOect July 1, 2026. Courts are required to begin scheduling hearings by January 1, 2027. Corrections oWcials are required to identify eligible people and notify them. If you qualify, the system is supposed to come to you.
But will it?
Who Qualifies
BASIC ELIGIBILITY
Your offense must have occurred before July 1, 2021, when Virginia legalized adult-use cannabis possession.
It must have been a felony involving possession, manufacture, sale, or distribution. Misdemeanor-only convictions are not covered.
You must still be incarcerated, on probation, or under community supervision as of July 1, 2026. If you have already completed your sentence, this law does not apply. That is a separate fight.
The conduct must be something that is no longer treated the same way under current Virginia law. Simple possession and home cultivation are the clearest examples.
If those boxes are checked, the law says the system finds you. You should not have to do anything to trigger the process. Unfortunately, the word “should” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
What Spanberger Actually Tried to Do
Before she signed this bill, Spanberger sent the legislature amendments that would have removed the automatic hearing process entirely. Under her version, eligible people would have had to find out the law existed, figure out if they qualified, and then navigate the court system on their own, filing their own petitions, mostly without a lawyer, while in prison or on supervision.he legislature said no. Both chambers rejected her changes and sent the original bill back unchanged. Unlike with SB542/HB642 which would’ve set the framework for recreational sales which she vetoed, she signed this bill anyway.
“The original bill puts the responsibility on the system, not on the people it was supposed to help. I’m grateful the Governor signed it as written.”
Del. Rozia A. Henson, Jr.
The automatic process survived because lawmakers held the line. But the risk that some will fall through the cracks did not go away just because the petition requirement did. An automatic notification process is only as good as the corrections officials implementing it. If someone gets missed, if there is a classification error, if the notification never comes, that person now has to know to fight for something the law already promised them. That is the gap. And gaps like that do not close themselves.
What to Do If You Are Being Missed
The law takes effect July 1. Hearings must start by January 1, 2027. If you or someone you know should qualify and nothing is happening, here is what to do.
Document everything first. Conviction date, the offense, current supervision status, any communications with corrections or probation. You need a paper trail before you need anything else.
Put it in writing to the facility. A written request to the warden or facility administrator asking whether the case has been flagged for review under HB 26 and SB 62. Get a response in writing. If the answer is no or no one responds, that is your documentation for the next step.
Contact organizations that are tracking this. The Last Prisoner Project and Marijuana Justice Virginia were directly involved in getting this legislation passed and are watching implementation. Virginia Legal Aid handles cases for people who cannot afford private counsel. These are not general hotlines. These are people who know this specific law and what it is supposed to do.
Contact your delegate and state senator. If corrections officials are failing to identify eligible people, that is both a constituent services problem and a legislative oversight problem. Use both angles.
If you are under community supervision rather than incarcerated, be especially proactive. Probation and parole departments have significant discretion and fewer resources. The notification obligation applies to them too. Do not assume your officer is tracking this.
The Part Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
In the same week, Spanberger signed a law that could help over 1,000 people still serving time for conduct she spent part of her career as a federal agent prosecuting, and she vetoed the retail market that would have prevented the next round of arrests. She also tried to strip the automatic process out of the resentencing bill before she signed it. Lawmakers stopped her on both.
The resentencing law is real. But relief for past harm while blocking the future market and attempting to introduce penalties harsher than anything on the books before 2021 is not a cannabis policy. It is a managed contradiction, and contradictions like that resolve in favor of whoever has the most power in the room.
Right now, that is not the people waiting on hearings. Which is exactly why someone needs to be watching whether this law gets implemented the way it was written, not the way Spanberger wanted it written. January 2027 is the deadline. If hearings are not being scheduled, that is when to make noise.
At the end of the day, this is a huge step forward for cannabis justice, especially for the communities most affected by prohibition: communities of black and brown people.
Del. Henson said it best when he said “Virginia made a promise when it legalized cannabis. Today, we kept it.”
