With Virginia’s short 2025 legislative session underway, state officials are recommending that lawmakers seal all criminal records pertaining to marijuana offenses for simple possession and revise the state’s record-sealing process around cannabis paraphernalia crimes.
The Virginia State Crime Commission voted last week to approve a number of recommendations related to record sealing, including the around cannabis.
“What the legislation before you does is ensures that all possession of marijuana offenses are sealed, regardless of whether they’re a conviction or not a conviction, without the entry of a court order,” commission Deputy Director Colin Drabert told members at a meeting last week.
While it’s ultimately up to the legislature whether to take the body’s advice, lawmakers who sit on the commission have since filed bills reflecting the proposed changes: SB 1466, was introduced in the Senate on Friday by Sen. Scott Surovell (D), while Rep. Charniele Herring (D) filed HB 2723 in the House of Delegates.
Under then new legislation, charges and convictions for “any criminal or civil offense” around marijuana possession would be “sealed without the entry of a court order.”
The provision would not apply to certain Department of Motor Vehicle records affected by federal record retention requirements. Business screening services that refer to people’s criminal histories or driving records, however, would be required to “promptly delete” sealed cannabis charges and convictions.
Crime commission members made a number of adjustments to the broader record-sealing reform package at last week’s meeting, but those did not affect the marijuana provisions.
Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of the advocacy group Marijuana Justice, said her organization and other allies would be pushing for the new legislation’s passage.
“Marijuana Justice, as well as our full Cannajustice Coalition, which includes Justice Forward Virginia, RISE for Youth and Virginia Student Power Network,” she said in an email, “is dedicated to implementing the 2025 record sealing process to repair the harm of past marijuana offenses and even with the changes, we still support of the proposals made by Delegate Herring and Senator Surovell.”
Last March, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed a bill to provide resentencing relief for people convicted of past cannabis crimes. Had it become law, many marijuana-related criminal cases would have needed to be resentenced by the end of 2024. People whose sentences for other crimes were enhanced because of a prior marijuana conviction, meanwhile, would had received hearings by April 1 of this year.
In his veto statement at the time, the governor wrote that “This bill grants eligibility to a significant number of violent felons who have already received a full and fair hearing,” adding: “Now is not the time to allow an imprudent resentencing process that undermines public safety.”
Use, possession and limited cultivation of marijuana by adults has been legal in Virginia since the enactment of a 2021 law.
Commercial sales, however, remain prohibited after Republicans subsequently blocked the required reenactment of a regulatory framework for the cannabis industry. Democrats in the House and Senate recently introduced a measure that would legalize and regulate retail sales.
Lawmakers passed a commercial legalization measure last February, but Youngkin vetoed the legislation measure the following month.
Del. Paul Krizek (D) and Sen. Aaron Rouse (D) each sponsored separate legal sales bills last year, but this year they introduced a combined proposal reflecting the compromises made last session. Krizek told Marijuana Moment late last year that it’s important to pursue the change despite the governor’s opposition.
“The governor’s made it very clear that he will veto it, but nonetheless, it’s important,” he said of the coming effort. “It’s important we have a marketplace with safe, tested and taxed products.”
On Friday the Senate Committee on Rehabilitation and Social Services advanced Rouse’s bill on an 8–7 vote.
“I’m proud to have brought forth a framework for adult-use cannabis through a structured license application process,” Rouse said before Friday’s committee vote. “This bill prioritizes public safety in creating a well-regulated marketplace that keeps adult products out of the hands of kids. In recent years we have seen an unchecked proliferation of illegal and unregulated marijuana stores. This has put Virginians at risk as unlicensed drug dealers sell billions of dollars of untested and untaxed products, frequently to children.”
“A well-regulated retail market is a necessity for public safety and will ensure that products are tested for safety, that they’re accurately labeled, sold in a controlled environment and kept away from kids,” he said.
Krizek, meanwhile, has noted that more Republicans may be willing to challenge Youngkin’s opposition this year given that he’s unable to run for reelection in November. “It’s not something that Republican leaders in other states aren’t already doing,” he said of regulating cannabis sales. “It’s not a partisan issue in my mind.”
He also left the door open for the legal sales proposal to become “a bargaining chip in some bigger budgetary issue,” as it briefly was last session.
“This is our opportunity to craft the best bill possible so that we can get rid of this ongoing proliferation of retail activity that’s out there,” Krizek said.
Following the governor’s veto of the legislature-passed bill last session, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), which focuses on electing Democrats to state legislatures, slammed Youngkin for his marijuana reform opposition, saying that he “continues to hold Virginia back and block the progress made by Democrats in control of the legislature.”
Separately, Rouse has said in response to complaints by law enforcement that legalization would helped reduce violence around illegal sales of marijuana.
Some had higher hopes for Youngkin when he was first elected in 2021.
“With Governor-elect Youngkin previously stating that he would uphold the will of the people, and focus on creating a ‘rip-roaring economy,’ we are fully confident that he and the people of Virginia will continue to make progress,” Jim Cacioppo, the CEO, chairman and founder of multistate cannabis company Jushi Holdings, said in a statement at the time.
In an email to Marijuana Moment after the veto, however, Jushi’s chief strategy director, Trent Woloveck, described Youngkin as “a sanctimonious culture warrior.”
The governor last year also greeted less controversial marijuana reforms coldly. Earlier in March, for example, he vetoed a separate proposal that would have prevented the state from using marijuana alone as evidence of child abuse or neglect despite the measure winning unanimous or near-unanimous approval in votes on the Senate floor.
Following that action, Del. Rae Cousins (D), the bill’s sponsor, accused the governor of “turning his back on the needs of our children and neglecting their well-being by encouraging the courts to move forward with unnecessary family separations.”
Separately in the state, Virginia Health Commissioner Karen Shelton said last April that her agency had received a sufficient number of reports of minors getting sick from cannabis products that the commonwealth would create a “special surveillance system” to track the issue.
With Virginia’s short 2025 legislative session underway, state officials are recommending that lawmakers seal all criminal records pertaining to marijuana offenses for simple possession and revise the state’s record-sealing process around cannabis paraphernalia crimes. The Virginia State Crime Commission voted last week to approve a number of recommendations related to record sealing, including the around Read More
