Glenn Youngkin vetoed Virginia’s retail marijuana market twice — in 2024 and again in 2025 — warning there was “nothing about this that is good for kids.” Six months after Virginia swore in a Democrat to replace him, the market is going up anyway.
This week, Governor Abigail Spanberger and Democrat lawmakers announced the deal: recreational pot sales begin July 1, 2027, taxed at 6% and climbing to 8%, with localities free to add up to 3.5% more.
Be honest about where the public is. Most Americans favor loosening marijuana laws — nearly nine in ten tell Pew it should be legal in some form, and most Virginians back retail sales. This is not a column about reefer madness.
Follow the money. The new pot taxes — six percent at launch, climbing to eight by 2029 — are earmarked for something called the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund, along with the usual list Democrats reach for whenever they want to grow government: childcare, K-12, behavioral health, and public health.
Here’s the part they’d rather you not notice: the marijuana marketplace wasn’t passed on its own. It was written straight into the state budget — the same budget Democrats still can’t pass. They control the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s mansion, they’ve been deadlocked for months, and they’re staring down a July 1 government shutdown. But for all that, they managed to agree on one thing: a brand-new tax stream, and how to spend it before a single legal store opens in 2027.
And consider the company the policy keeps. The Democrat who chairs budget negotiations in the state Senate — Finance Chair Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), a longtime legalization champion who co-owns a Portsmouth cannabis shop — had that shop and her office raided by the FBI in May, in a federal corruption and illegal-marijuana probe. Lucas denies wrongdoing and hasn’t been charged. But that’s the hand steering the budget that now bankrolls itself with pot taxes — and these are the people asking Virginia families to trust where the money goes.
Ask yourself the question the politicians won’t. Is this the Virginia you want — one that overspends at every turn, then opens casinos and a pot market to keep the revenue flowing?
Because the logic does not stop on its own. Once a government decides it can tax its way out of its own appetite, the only question left is what it monetizes next.
Today it is casinos and cannabis. Tomorrow it is whatever the next budget gap demands. If revenue is the only principle left, what stops the next generation of politicians from putting cocaine on the table — and who in Richmond will say no?
The record is the record. Youngkin said no, twice. Virginia elected a Democrat. The casinos stayed open, the budget never balanced, and the pot market got a start date.
Spanberger cannot run again. But Del. Paul Krizek of Fairfax, Sen. Lashrecse Aird, and every General Assembly Democrat who built this market are on the ballot in November 2027.
The first legal pot shops open that same summer. The only check left is the one Youngkin no longer holds — the voters.