See our FAQs: Virginia’s marijuana laws explained.
The people have spoken.
They just haven’t spoken in an election, but people can vote in other ways. Ronald Reagan used to talk about how people can vote with their feet, moving to places that offer better opportunities. People also vote every day in the marketplace with their consumer choices.
By that measure, people in Southwest Virginia have already voted in favor of retail cannabis.
Never mind that it’s illegal in Virginia to sell marijuana (outside of a medical marijuana license). Over the past few weeks, Cardinal has documented how there are now dozens of stores from the New River Valley to the Tennessee state line that are openly selling cannabis — nearly a year after law enforcement raided some of them. I purchased cannabis at stores in Abingdon and Marion that we had tested to confirm that, yep, this really is pot. I went to a store in Radford, where, after buying 3 cents worth of CBD, a legal, nonintoxicating part of the cannabis plant, for $30, the clerks “shared” a bag of weed. Again, never mind that Attorney General Jason Miyares has issued an opinion that such “adult share” arrangements are illegal — and so are the “memberships” that these stores are apparently using as their business model.
Police simply don’t seem to have much interest in these places; given a choice between fighting fentanyl that’s killing people or weed shops that aren’t, well, that’s an easy choice.
What fascinates me here is the politics of pot. These stores are most visible in Southwest Virginia, politically the most conservative part of the state. If weed stores are openly flourishing, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by the ones in Radford and Blacksburg, two college towns (with the former leaning Democratic and the latter being strongly Democratic). However, the others we’ve found are in some of the brightest red parts of the state.
There’s at least one cannabis store in Wythe County (which voted 77.8% for Donald Trump four years ago) and at least one in Tazewell County (which voted 83.1% for Trump). Marion has at least two stores, and Smyth County voted 77.6% Republican. There are multiple stores in Washington County, which voted 75.6% Republican. Bristol has at least nine such stores, and it voted 68.5% Republican.
That’s certainly at odds with how legislators vote. In the General Assembly, Republicans have been almost unanimously opposed to legalizing retail cannabis — and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, vetoed the bill that Democrats passed. What are we to make of this dichotomy?
I was recently asked that question during an interview with WLNI-FM in Lynchburg. My answer was: Go listen to Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road.” That song, about an Appalachian mountaineer who grew up in a moonshining family and later turned to growing marijuana, explains some things better than any policy analysis can. For those of you who prefer that policy analysis, here it is: In one state after another, when legal cannabis is on the ballot, we’ve consistently seen some Republican voters vote for legal weed. That’s why we’ve seen ruby-red states such as Missouri, Montana and South Dakota vote in favor of recreational cannabis (although the South Dakota Supreme Court later ruled that the measure was unconstitutional). In previous columns, I’ve attempted to calculate the threshold at which a Republican-voting locality tips between voting for and against cannabis. Generally, I found that if a locality voted 60% or more Republican, it would vote against legal weed. However, if the Republican vote was somewhere in the 50% to 59% range, then there was a good chance that it would vote for the jazz cabbage.
The one exception to that rule came last November in Ohio. Here’s another Republican-voting state that voted for weed — not only did 57.1% vote yes, but the devil’s lettuce won more votes than JD Vance did when he was on the ballot for U.S. Senate in a higher turnout election the year before. In Vance’s home state, legal marijuana is more popular than he is! It’s probably more popular than a lot of other politicians, regardless of party.
More tellingly, legal weed passed in some counties that voted 70% or more Republican in the presidential vote — with the most Republican pro-cannabis county in Ohio being Vinton County, which voted 76.9% Republican. Those pro-weed 70% Republican counties all had one thing in common: They were in the Appalachian parts of Ohio. That led me last year to suggest that perhaps the Appalachian counties in Virginia might do the same if they ever had the chance — vote for legal weed even as they vote overwhelmingly Republican. They won’t (Virginia’s not a referendum and initiative state), but the political point remains the same. “Copperhead Road” is a pretty fine piece of political analysis, after all, and the proof of it can be found in all these cannabis stores that seem to be doing a booming business. (When I visited the one in Abingdon, I had to wait in line to get to the clerk; at one point, there were six people lined up to buy the space cake, as some call it.)
Maybe this will give some Republicans political cover to vote for legal weed; we’ll see. Many seem to be at odds with what their own constituents are supporting in the marketplace, whether that marketplace is legal or not. To be fair, a lot of Republicans seem prepared to vote for some form of retail cannabis — they just haven’t liked the details of the Democratic bills, and they’ve seen no reason to take a political risk when they knew the governor was going to veto the bill anyway. Based on the presence of all these cannabis stores, the political risk may not be as high as they thought it was.
I personally have zero interest in cannabis. I’m pretty straight-edge. I grew up in a church that once campaigned against alcohol and I still don’t drink any. Invite me out for a beer and I’ll have iced tea. My grandmother was buried with her Women’s Christian Temperance Union pin. If every liquor store in the state shut down tomorrow, I wouldn’t be bothered in the least. However, we tried that once and Prohibition didn’t work, so we decided as a society it was better to legalize alcohol and strictly regulate it. What we’ve got now in Southwest Virginia is the equivalent of moonshiners during Prohibition being so emboldened that they’re not just hauling bootleg whiskey under cover of darkness, they’re opening storefronts in broad daylight.
The weed stores I visited weren’t back-alley operations. The stores I visited in Abingdon, Blacksburg, Marion and Radford are literally on the main streets of their respective towns. Cardinal’s Susan Cameron found five within 11 blocks on State Street, the famous main drag through Bristol. I’m sympathetic with the governor, who said he didn’t want a cannabis shop on every corner — but in some parts of Virginia, we already have them! The bill Youngkin vetoed would have limited the number of licenses for cannabis stores to 350. For comparison purposes, we have 404 Alcoholic Beverage Control board stores statewide. However, in some of these towns in Southwest Virginia, we now have more cannabis stores than liquor stores. Marion has one liquor store; it has at least two cannabis stores. Bristol has two ABC stores but at least nine cannabis stores. In some places, legalizing retail cannabis would reduce the number of cannabis shops — assuming it’s coupled with enforcement to crack down on rogue operators, something that doesn’t seem to be happening now (although there was that raid last year).
I also noticed something else when I bought weed in Marion. Perhaps you can spot it in this photo of the store:
It’s right across the street from a church — St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. Earlier this year, when the General Assembly was trying to pass a bill to legalize so-called electronic skill games, the governor proposed a controversial amendment to impose exclusion zones around churches, schools and other gaming facilities. Under that amendment (which was defeated), skill games couldn’t be operated within 2,500 feet of a church or school. Feel free to argue whether that was a wise amendment or not, but the point is, here’s a cannabis store directly across the street from a church! We don’t know what regulations might accompany a regulated cannabis market, but no one should be surprised if those regulations involved some kind of exclusion zone. Virginia’s rules for medical marijuana dispensaries already ban such facilities within 1,000 feet of a school or daycare. I mapped the cannabis stores I’m aware of but didn’t find any that close to a school or daycare — unless you count some intramural fields at Radford University as a school.
I’ll also point out: Of the three stores where I paid money and walked out with cannabis — two were outright purchases, one purported to be a “sharing” arrangement — only one charged tax. If you count the now-shuttered store in Roanoke County that I visited last summer, then that’s one of four. And, as I pointed out in a previous column, consumers have no way of knowing what’s in the weed they’re buying. This isn’t stuff being grown under regulated circumstances. The test on the weed in Roanoke County last summer found it moldy. The test on the Radford weed found it had more arsenic, lead and cadmium than the Environmental Protection Agency would let you drink (although, to be fair, it was still less than what you’d find in a tobacco cigarette).
When I talke to people about cannabis — be they politicians or scientists — the phrase that kept coming up is “the wild, wild West.” That’s what we have now. Or, should I say, the wild, wild Southwest?
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I write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that comes out every Friday afternoon. Last week I wrote about the obstacles to solar energy in rural Virginia and congressional fundraising, along with a trivia question: JD Vance has a beard, making him the first national candidate since Charles Fairbanks, vice president under Theodore Roosevelt, to sport a full beard. So who was the last Virginia governor with a beard? The answer: William Hodges Mann, who was governor from 1910 to 1914. That’s him with his staff in a Library of Congress photo.
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