Virginia Republicans Take Action To Decrease State Funding For The Marijuana Regulator!
Concern for the future of the legal marijuana sector in Virginia has increased after Republican lawmakers proposed cutting the authority’s budget by over 70%. Richmond television station WRIC reported on Wednesday that the budget for the Cannabis Control Authority (CCA) would be reduced by $13.4 million over two years under a state spending plan submitted by Virginia’s House Republicans.
The proposed budget is in response to the failure of a Republican-controlled General Assembly committee to pass legislation to manage the state’s soon-to-be legalized adult-use marijuana sector. Since 2020, Virginia has had a restricted medicinal marijuana market, and, per the terms of the legalization bill signed into law by the state’s former Democratic governor, sales of marijuana for recreational use were to have begun on January 1, 2024.
Virginia’s new Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, is less interested in establishing a recreational market and more concerned with regulating items containing psychoactive cannabinoids produced from hemp, such as delta-8 THC. The planned defunding of the CCA is part of a larger strategy by Virginia Republicans to damage the state’s legal marijuana industry, according to observers.
Adam Ebbin, a Democrat serving as a state senator, told WRIC that the Republican party in the House of Delegates has been an obstacle to the legal selling of cannabis. The TV station claims that negotiations will take place “in the next days” regarding the House’s planned budget amendment.
According to an email from acting CCA chief Jeremy Preiss to the WRIC, the agency was caught off guard by the anticipated budget cuts, which “may undermine the regulation of medicinal cannabis and efforts that address public health hazards connected with marijuana legalization.”
According to the TV station, the budget proposal put up by the Democrat-controlled state Senate allocates an additional $6 million to the CCA to help it establish a regulatory framework for Virginia’s adult-use business.
