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Gov. Glenn Youngkin has again vetoed legislation that would have allowed people to buy cannabis in Virginia for recreational use.
The General Assembly passed bills from Del. Paul Krizek (D–Fairfax) and state Sen. Aaron Rouse (D–Virginia Beach) during the 2025 session that aimed to establish a regulated and taxed recreational cannabis marketplace with retail sales starting in May 2026.
The proposal passed mostly along party lines, garnering a little more support from Republicans than it did in 2024. But, like last year, the proposal didn’t get backing from the one Republican it needed an endorsement from: Youngkin.
“It’s a missed opportunity,” Del. Krizek said in a statement Monday after being told about the veto. “I held out some hope he would sign the bill, but it is clear that the Governor doesn’t understand that a strong majority of Virginians want a well regulated, safe, adult use only market.”
Virginia has allowed people 21 and older to consume, grow, gift and carry small amounts of cannabis for recreational use since July 2021. And Youngkin’s latest veto ensures there still won’t be a legal way to buy it in the commonwealth for at least another year.
“Attempting to rectify the error of decriminalizing marijuana by establishing a safe and regulated marketplace is an unachievable goal,” Youngkin wrote in his veto statement, which was nearly identical to the one from 2024.
Youngkin reiterated points he made last year when explaining his reasons for vetoing the 2025 proposal, claiming that legalizing retail cannabis sales would endanger the health and safety of Virginians; that states with retail markets have seen adverse effects on children; and that in states with approved retail sales, there’s been an increase in gang activity, violent crime and other issues.
Democrats and marijuana advocates said setting up a legal retail marketplace would help cannabis users to move away from the illegal market and buy tested and regulated products.
Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of the Richmond-based nonprofit Marijuana Justice, called it a missed opportunity to not have a cannabis market that brings in tax revenue and requires products to be tested before sale.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to have more hospital admissions and intakes through possible cannabis poison,” she told VPM News. “It means that people are going to be buying cannabis that they don’t know what’s in it.”
Shaban Athuman
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VPM News
Chelsea Higgs Wise, co-founder of Marijuana Justice Virginia, gives comments during a Senate Committee on Rehabilitation and Social Services subcommittee on Senate Bill 448, which would create a framework to establish a retail marijuana market starting in January 2025, on Thursday, January 25, 2024, at the General Assembly Building in Richmond, Virginia.
Higgs Wise added that creating a retail market could help address racial disparities in marijuana-related arrests, which continued after Virginia legalized small amounts of cannabis. She also pushed back on arguments that adolescent cannabis use increased in states that have legalized marijuana, pointing to research from April 2024 that found it was lower.
Under the proposal Youngkin vetoed, the regulated recreational cannabis industry would have been overseen by the state’s Cannabis Control Authority and licenses would have been issued to businesses in September.
A 2020 report from JLARC — the nonpartisan research arm of the General Assembly — projected a legal Virginia marijuana marketplace could generate between $609 million and just over $1 billion in its fifth year of operation.
Using the midpoint of JLARC’s estimate as a base, the state Department of Planning and Budget said that the framework proposed by Krizek and Rouse could bring in nearly $300 million in revenue between fiscal years 2026 and 2031. (Virginia’s fiscal year runs July 1–June 30.)
Currently, Virginians who are 21 and older can have up to 1 ounce of marijuana on them, buy it from qualified dispensaries with a medical marijuana license and grow up to four plants in their homes.
A Democrat-controlled General Assembly voted to allow recreational cannabis possession starting in July 2021, but didn’t set up a legal way to buy it without another vote. Since then, Republicans have blocked Democrats’ efforts to create a legal retail market.
Expecting another Youngkin veto, Krizek conceded in December that a retail cannabis market in Virginia will likely require a Democrat becoming governor this fall, telling VPM News “it’s a long game” with some legislation.
The only Republican currently qualified for the 2025 gubernatorial race, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, has previously opposed recreational cannabis use. (Other Republicans have declared an intent to run, but their candidacies are not yet finalized with the state.) In a 2024 interview with RVA Mag, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the lone Democrat currently running for governor, said Virginia needs “a formalized, legal, emerging cannabis market.”
“By vetoing this legislation Governor Youngkin has once again failed the citizens of Virginia by allowing an already thriving illegal cannabis market to persist,” Krizek said in his statement. “We ignore it at our peril, as it becomes even more difficult to deal with this as a growing public safety concern to combat the proliferation of illicit products, especially with respect to children.”
Youngkin also vetoed a bill that would have allowed people incarcerated or on community supervision as of July 1 for a marijuana-related crime committed before July 2021 a chance to potentially change their sentence.
Youngkin vetoed 157 bills before Monday’s deadline to act on bills from the 2025 legislative session, his office announced. Lawmakers could override the vetoes, but Democrats don’t have the two-thirds majorities in the Legislature needed to do that for the recreational cannabis proposal.
“}]] The governor axed another Democrat-led effort to create a legal retail market. Read More
