by Derrick A. Max

Governor Abigail Spanberger announced her support for a deal to create a legal retail cannabis market in Virginia — only weeks after vetoing a bill to do much the same thing.

That should give Virginians pause.

Virginia has yet to pass a budget and is only two weeks from a government shutdown. While lawmakers were still deadlocked over the data center tax exemptions, the governor announced that she is now prepared to accept a retail marijuana market as a part of the budget package — weeks after vetoing a similar cannabis bill. That makes the proposal look less like a carefully crafted framework and more like a legislative sweetener to weaken the opposition of Senator L. Louise Lucas, who is both a vocal supporter of marijuana legalization and the owner of the Cannabis Outlet in Portsmouth, VA. 

When the governor vetoed the earlier cannabis legislation, she said that the bill needed stronger protections for children, clearer enforcement authority, more resources for product testing and inspections, better tools to shut down illicit operators, and a regulatory system that would put public safety first.

Those were not minor objections.

Now, with a government shutdown threatened, the governor says those concerns have been sufficiently addressed. The new cannabis agreement would allow retail cannabis sales beginning in July 2027, authorize hundreds of retail licenses, increase the legal possession limit, impose new state and local taxes, regulate intoxicating hemp products, and direct some revenue toward education, substance-abuse prevention, public health, and equity programs.

Granted, there are improvements from the earlier bill. The delayed start date gives regulators more time. Child-resistant packaging, restrictions on cartoonish marketing, buffers around schools and playgrounds, penalties for underage sales, and stronger oversight of intoxicating hemp products are all better than an unregulated market.

But the larger question remains unanswered: Why should Virginia create a commercial cannabis industry at all?

There is a major difference between decriminalizing possession and building a retail marketplace. Decriminalization says the state will not ruin someone’s life over a small amount of marijuana. Commercial legalization says the state will license, tax, regulate, and normalize an industry whose financial success depends on more people using more cannabis more often.

That is not a small distinction.

Supporters often present legalization as a matter of personal freedom. But the consequences of drug use are not always personal. When cannabis use contributes to impaired driving, job loss, lower productivity, family instability, dependency, public disorder, or increased demand for social services, the costs are spread across employers, taxpayers, families, schools, landlords, neighborhoods, and law enforcement.

That is especially true for the poor.

For an affluent adult, marijuana may be a private vice with manageable consequences. For someone already struggling in life, regular drug use can become another obstacle to stability. A missed shift, a failed drug test, a child-safety issue, or a decline in motivation can have far more severe consequences for a low-income worker than for someone with savings, flexibility, and family support.

That is why conservatives should reject the simplistic claim that cannabis legalization is cost-free freedom. The profits are privatized. The costs are socialized. The tax gains are mostly paid for by the poor.

Virginia already spends billions on Medicaid, housing assistance, food assistance, public education, behavioral health, criminal justice, and child welfare. If the state creates a legal cannabis market, these costs will only go up. Policy makers should not seek tax revenue from a product that may contribute to social instability and then claim virtue by dedicating some of that money to programs meant to repair the damage.

That is not fiscal responsibility. It is government dependency on vice.

In the last administration, tax revenue was created from high tech jobs and keeping and attracting businesses that would diversify Virginia’s economy away from its dependence on federal employment. The emphasis today from progressive budget negotiators appears to be on raising revenue from cannabis, casinos, online gaming, skills games, and other industries that prey overwhelmingly on young people and the poor.

There are also serious public-safety concerns. Cannabis can impair driving, yet testing for marijuana impairment is far more complicated than testing for alcohol. Before Virginia opens retail stores, the Commonwealth should have a credible impaired-driving strategy. If lawmakers are determined to legalize retail sales, they should at least protect the innocent from the consequences of other people’s drug use.

The same is true in the workplace. Legalization must not become a backdoor attack on the right of employers to maintain safe, productive, drug-free workplaces. Employers must retain the right to test employees and applicants, especially in safety-sensitive positions. And no worker should be told that “legal” means consequence-free.

Virginia’s new cannabis agreement may include more safeguards, more regulatory structure, and more promises about how tax revenue will be spent. But it still moves the Commonwealth toward the same destination: a state-sanctioned commercial cannabis industry and an increasingly blurry message to children about the safety and acceptance of drug use.

Conservatives should be clear about the principle at stake. Free markets depend on personal responsibility, productive work, family stability, public safety, and the rule of law. A market is not truly free when private actors capture the profit while taxpayers and communities are left to absorb the fallout.

The better course is simpler: Virginia should not commercialize cannabis.

The state should not balance budgets, fund programs, or promise “equity” on the back of a product that can weaken the very habits poor families need most: work, sobriety, responsibility, and upward mobility. This bill will make dependency easier, work less stable, roads less safe, and poverty more difficult to escape. 

Budget negotiators should stop threatening industries like data centers that build wealth, fund state and local budgets, and are the future of our economy. Lawmakers should focus on keeping and attracting high technology, not on helping Virginian’s get high. 

Derrick Max is Vice President of Policy at the Jefferson Forum, which first published this commentary.