Gov. Abigail Spanberger explained her cannabis veto: she didn’t want to rush like other states. The problem is that the states that rushed are doing fine, and her veto just froze a $50 million expansion and hundreds of jobs.
A day after vetoing the bill that would have launched Virginia’s adult-use cannabis market, Gov. Abigail Spanberger explained herself. Speaking at an unrelated event Wednesday, she said she still supports a retail market but wants “a durable one,” and that opening sales by January 2027 was simply too fast.
“The notion that, between July and January, we would be able to build out all of the rules of the road for a legal recreational marijuana market and have doors open to sales in January, is a rushed time frame.”
Gov. Abigail Spanberger
She also said the 350-store cap in the bill, with up to three stores per locality, was “far more” than she was comfortable with, and that her team had talked with other governors to learn from “the mistakes of other states that have either rushed, or even thinking that they got it right on a methodical path.” (We covered the veto itself and the new criminal penalties that killed it for her own party, here.)
Here’s the catch. She never named a single state or a single mistake.
The states that “rushed” are fine
The trouble with the too-fast argument is that the record points the other way. Ohio launched adult-use sales in August 2024, less than a year after voters legalized it in November 2023. Maryland opened in July 2023, eight months after its own ballot measure. Neither rollout drew much industry criticism.
The state most operators point to as a cautionary tale is New York, which moved slowly. Its first store didn’t open until December 2022, nearly two years …
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Author: Javier Hasse / High Times
