Target 7: Countdown to marijuana marketplace now underway in Virginia

MANASSAS, Va. (WDBJ) - Trent Woloveck was looking ahead and looking forward to a retail marketplace for cannabis when we first met in January.

The Chief Strategy Director for Jushi Holdings, Woloveck led us on a tour of a 100,000-square-foot, two-story grow facility in northern Virginia.

That’s where the company cultivates cannabis and creates a variety of products for the medical market.

“There’s a lot of science, a lot of math, a lot of planning that goes into that from a business perspective,” Woloveck told WDBJ7. “It doesn’t just happen overnight with a snap of the fingers, you buy a machine and you produce more stuff.”

The Commonwealth decriminalized marijuana in 2020 and legalized recreational use of small amounts a year later, but the state failed to create a way for Virginians to purchase cannabis legally.

And for a while it appeared that gray area wasn’t going away, when a disagreement between Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Senate Democrats led to a veto of legislation that would create an adult-use retail marketplace..

“So, I have always maintained that Virginia needs to move forward with creating a retail market,” Spanberger said in a recent interview.

Spanberger told WDBJ7’s Kate Capodanno she initially vetoed the legislation, because she thought it needed stronger provisions for public safety, public health and consumer protection.

“And ultimately, we landed in a place where I feel that we are, you know, making good decisions for Virginia, learning certainly from the successes and, you know, in some cases failures, in some cases kind of suboptimal choices of other states,” Spanberger said.

Prevention experts, including Roanoke’s Nancy Hans, remain wary, especially when it comes to the impact of a legal marketplace on marijuana use among young people.

“And I have to look from a prevention and education piece, because this is not the same type of THC that was even 10 years ago, especially not 20 and 30 years ago,” Hans said.

But advocates of responsible marijuana use say a regulated marketplace is better than the current alternative that includes very little oversight.

JM Pedini is the Development Director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and Executive Director of NORML’s Virginia Chapter.

“It takes marijuana out of the corner store, out of the vape shop, and instead puts it into only state licensed dispensaries where it can be properly regulated both for consumer safety and to prevent youth access,” Pedini said.

Medical marijuana operators will pay a $10 million fee to convert to the retail marketplace.

Woloveck said Jushi will continue to serve customers of its medical dispensaries. And the company is planning a major expansion for the retail market that should double production.

“We’re continuing to expand not only in our current build-out, but making a $30 to $50 million investment in the back of that property, as well as, you know, looking at a second site so that we can continue to produce the biomass necessary to service what we believe is somewhere between a $2 to $4 billion market in Virginia over the next 12 to 24 months,” Woloveck said.

With a rollout like this, the devil is often in the details.

The Cannabis Control Authority is now developing regulations that will govern these new operations.

The CCA is soliciting feedback from the public, and an online survey is open until Tuesday, July 21.

The state will license up to 350 retailers across the state, a figure similar to the number of ABC stores in Virginia. That’s another hurdle the CCA must clear, before the new retail marketplace goes live on July 1, 2027.