Fortunately, I don’t have 420 questions about the bill taking shape that would legalize retail sales of cannabis in Virginia.

Smoking weed (or consuming it in other forms) does shorten your attention span, so those of you who have indulged probably couldn’t sit through that many questions. Instead, I do have five observations to make, one for each leaf on the cannabis plant.

If you’re dazed and confused about what I’m talking about, see my previous column about the legalization bill.

Otherwise, here’s my toke — umm, I mean take — on the bill:

1. The implication of no ‘opt-out’ provision will be felt most keenly in Southwest and Southside

The assumption has always been that localities would be able to opt out of legal retail sales by holding a referendum to ban them. Nope. The biggest headline out of last week’s meeting of the legislative panel that is drafting the bill is that there will be no opt-out provision. The rationale is that the purpose of legalization is to try to kill off the thriving black market of pot dealers; if a locality were to opt out, they’re not really banning sales, they’re just banning legal sales. 

The places most likely to have opted out would have been conservative-voting localities in Southwest and Southside, but that’s not why those localities will feel this most keenly. It’s because they’re home to what could be some of the prime locations — near state lines.

Virginia will be the southernmost state with legal retail sales. We’ve already seen Tennessee pot smokers flock across the state line to patronize some rogue cannabis stores in Weber City in Scott County. If I were investing in a cannabis store — which I’m most assuredly not — I’d look at locations near the state lines. Emporia. Danville. Martinsville (or better yet, Ridgeway). Bristol. Weber City. Pound, near the Kentucky line. The town of Bluefield that abuts West Virginia’s Bluefield. Or Covington, just a short drive down Interstate 64 from West Virginia. 

We’ve seen stores near the state line sell an unusually high number of lottery tickets; there’s no reason to think this will be any different. 

2. The radius rule will force some potentially controversial decisions

To prevent “a weed shop on every corner,” the legislation envisions requiring 1 mile between cannabis stores. That provision prompted some objections at the commission meeting; the chairman, Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County, allowed as to how that might be reduced to a half-mile.

Whatever the limit, this is a consequence of having a regulated market. We don’t regulate how many barbecue joints a town can have or how close they can be to one another; we let the free market sort that out. This legislation, though, would put a cap on the number of cannabis stores statewide — 350, fewer than the 402 Alcoholic Beverage Control stores we have — and then regulate how close they can be.

Whether that exclusion zone is 1 mile or a half-mile, let’s think through how that would work. Somebody is going to get a license for the prime location downtown (or wherever the prime location in your town is) and somebody’s not. Maybe several somebodies. And they’re not going to be very happy.

How are those decisions going to be made? We don’t know. But we know who will be making them, which brings us to this:

3. The Cannabis Control Authority is going to become a lot more powerful

This board — whose five members are appointed by the governor — will be the entity that makes the decisions on who gets licenses and who doesn’t. It’s also in charge of deciding how many licenses will be awarded for other parts of the cannabis supply chain, from cultivation to processing to selling. It will even be in charge of designing and awarding licenses for cannabis delivery people, in case you want your weed delivered to your door. “Weed on wheels.” 

We’ve had this authority ever since possession of small amounts of cannabis was legalized in 2021. With retail sales legalized, the importance of this board is going to be elevated. At least during the initial startup of legal retail in Virginia, the Cannabis Control Authority is going to be one of the most closely watched boards in Virginia. It’s not often we open up a whole new business sector. There will be lots of decisions to be made, some of which we may not be able to anticipate. There are always unintended consequences.

The board, as currently constituted under Gov. Glenn Youngkin, has a distinctly law enforcement bent. The authority is chaired by retired Hopewell police chief John Keohane and includes a former Drug Enforcement Agency executive, a forensic toxicologist and a retired Republican state legislator. The only member with a purely private sector background is a hotel executive. What kind of people will Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger appoint when the current members’ terms expire? What kind of expertise should be on this board, given its new responsibilities? Spanberger’s appointments to this board may be more consequential than, say, her appointments to some college boards.

4. We’re going to smell a lot more weed

Right now, if you get caught smoking the devil’s lettuce in public, there’s a $25 fine. That’s not much of a disincentive. I’ve seen people in downtown Roanoke toking up during the day. The problem with that “smoke ’em if you got ’em” approach is that pot smells bad. Like, really bad. I once wrote a whole column on why weed has such a strong odor. It’s a chemical thing. Terpenes, if you want to get specific.

I worked in downtown Roanoke for 39 years and thoroughly loved the experience. We launched Cardinal in 2021 — not long after personal possession was legalized — and I began working from home in Botetourt County. Now I only go into downtown Roanoke when business demands it. I hate to say this, but the place stinks — literally. Almost every time I go downtown now, I come across the smell of marijuana. I know people who now refuse to patronize restaurants downtown because they so often encounter the awful odor of cannabis; I’m one of them. The night that Roanoke author Beth Macy announced her candidacy for Congress, I was walking back to my car and encountered a man walking down Church Avenue (he was not connected to the event). The stench of the jazz cabbage clung to him like the dark cloud that once hovered over the old “Dogpatch” comic strip character Joe Btfsplk. Worse yet, I could smell it for an entire block after he and I passed in the night.

What’s this going to be like once we make cannabis more widely available? State Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, has suggested we need to toughen the penalties for public consumption. It’s hard to tell whether there’s any support for that, but public consumption isn’t necessarily the problem — it’s the smell that trails along after. The fellow I passed on Church Avenue wasn’t toking up; he may have done that before he left home. Other times, I’ve seen people get out of cars downtown, and once the door opens, the stink rolls out. One of the things the legislative panel has on its agenda is to discuss the possibility of on-site consumption licenses — smoking lounges. How far will the smell from those travel once someone steps out the door? Another, more controversial, idea is the prospect of “cannabis event permits, such as farmers markets.” Yes, you can rope off an area and control who gets in, but you can’t control the smell. In this regard, cannabis is fundamentally different from alcohol or tobacco. We have laws to protect people from inhaling secondhand tobacco smoke; the issue with cannabis isn’t the smoke, it’s the stink.

5. Local police are going to face pressure to shut down unlicensed stores

Over the past two years, we at Cardinal have documented how there are stores openly selling cannabis, no matter what the law says. At one point, you could drive from Montgomery County to Bristol, and every locality had at least one cannabis store. That no longer appears to be the case because the one in Marion has shut down — or at least wasn’t in its former location the last time I was there. These stores generally try to skirt the law by claiming to be “membership clubs” or “adult share” operations, where they’re simply giving away cannabis as a gift if you make an unrelated purchase. The rules for membership are very slight, though. Multiple times, I simply walked in and was instantly made a member; it’s not like trying to get into the country club. Attorney General Jason Miyares has issued an opinion declaring that these adult share operations are illegal, but that seems to have had no effect. Law enforcement looks the other way. Why? The penalties for cannabis are so slight that they’re not worth the resources necessary to put together a case. Also, one police chief once told me, nobody has ever complained about these stores. 

In other words, right now there’s no pressure to crack down on these places. What happens, though, once someone shells out money to set up a licensed store? That store owner isn’t going to want an unlicensed competitor across the street who can sell weed at a lower price because that rogue operator doesn’t have to pay for a license and go through all the regulatory hoops. Krizek says it’ll be up to those license-holders to bring pressure on local law enforcement to shut down the unlicensed stores.

Once a community has a legal cannabis store, sheriffs and police chiefs are going to get complaints they’re not getting now. Pressure from a newly legalized cannabis business community is going to force them to divert resources to shutting down the rogue operators. This will be … interesting. All of this will be.

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