Author: Alex Moore
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The Storefront Lost. The Interstate Lane Is Still Open.
This sucks for retailers, and it’s worth just saying that plainly before getting into the legal mechanics. Friday, Judge Ballou denied the TRO and the injunction hemp businesses filed to stop HB 30 from taking effect. The taking claim didn’t hold. Economic loss isn’t treated as irreparable harm under the standard he was working with.…
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Senate Delays Federal Hemp Ban to December 11, Sends Funding Bill to House 61-32.
Senate Delays Federal Hemp Ban to December 11, Sends Funding Bill to House 61-32. Then 90-6. Those are the numbers that matter. The Senate voted early Saturday morning to fund the federal government through December 11, and buried inside that funding bill is a one-month reprieve for the hemp industry from a ban that was…
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The Hemp Industry Is Suing Virginia Again. Here’s the Case.
Barbara Biddle has been here before. In 2023, when Virginia first layered “total THC” restrictions onto hemp, her Leesburg store lost half its revenue and she laid off four employees. Now the state is coming for the one provision that let her business survive that first hit, and this time she’s a plaintiff, not a…
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Virginia Might Have Just Decriminalized Weed By Accident. And The State Police Just Told You They Believe It.
UPDATE: Since this piece first ran, the Virginia Code Commission stepped in and edited the online Code of Virginia, correcting what Chair Del. Marcus Simon called an “unmistakable error.” The posted code now reads the way everyone says it was supposed to all along: existing marijuana laws stay in effect until the retail framework launches…
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Move Over Black and Gray; Virginia Will Officially Have a Green Cannabis Market!
“We have a deal!” Delegate Paul Krizek announced on Friday. A joint press conference with Governor Spanberger is scheduled for Tuesday to make it official, but the House Conference Proposal Budget Amendment Package, which is 954 pages and finalized June 11, is already public. The framework is in there. We read it so you don’t…
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The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 Is Now Called SB543
Our governor clearly is not afraid of being VA cannabis’s most hated, and with 70% of constituents being pro retail cannabis, that seems like an odd position to take for someone with presidential aspirations. Approval ratings be damned, less than a month after vetoing retail legislation, Spanberger is instituting a framework to police the exact…
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Battle of the Heavyweights: Spanberger v. Lucas
Once close allies, Spanberger’s proposed amendments blew a hole in the relationship, and the raid on Lucas made it permanent. Now they’re going head to head publicly. Here’s what you need to know. Virginia’s cannabis fight has been covered from every angle: the veto, the votes, the timeline, the people still waiting on resentencing hearings.…
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Virginia’s Resentencing Law Is Real. Automatic is Not.
Spanberger signed HB 26 and SB 62 the same week she vetoed the retailmarket. Here is what the law actually does, who it covers, and whypeople who should qualify are already at risk of being left behind. Virginia’s cannabis resentencing law is real and people will benefit fromit. HB 26 and SB 62, signed May…
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Virginia Has Been Lying to You About Cannabis for Five Years
Possession has been legal since 2021. You still cannot buy it anywhere regulated. That is not a coincidence. It is a policy outcome, and the people who engineered it just got raided by the FBI. Let me just say what everybody in the industry already knows and nobody in Richmond wants to say out loud:…