The Virginia Cannabis Control Authority has now assumed oversight of the state's medical marijuana program. Their first order of business is getting dispensaries set up in the Shenandoah Valley and central Virginia. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
The Cannabis Control Act of 2021 established the authority to be Virginia's leading expert on cannabis safety and the regulator of a future retail market for recreational weed. Since then, the development of a retail market has gone into a holding pattern. Governor Glenn Youngkin's administration has puff, puff, passed on making any further progress towards legalization during his tenure.
So, the CCA now has another charge. Last year, the General Assembly transferred oversight of the state's medical marijuana program to them from the Board of Pharmacy. The shift went into effect on January 1st. Jeremy Preiss, acting head of the authority, said one of their top priorities is getting a medical marijuana provider established in 'Health Service Area I.'
JEREMY PREISS: Because right now, patients in Health Service Area I have to travel elsewhere to access regulated product.
Area I covers a large swath of the state, from Winchester down to Fredericksburg, over through Charlottesville, and up the Shenandoah Valley. Patients in this region who've been approved by a licensed practitioner to use cannabis for a medical condition have to travel as far as D.C. or Richmond if they want to visit a dispensary. And this is the only health service area out of five across the state that does not have a medical marijuana provider, officially referred to as a "pharmaceutical processor." That's because the company that won the original contract, PharmaCann, had their license rescinded by the Board of Pharmacy in 2020. According to court documents and Cannabis Business Times, the company had purchased land in Staunton where it planned to set up shop.
State law requires that pharmaceutical processors have a vertically integrated headquarters, where they grow, process, and sell medical marijuana all from one location. Then they can set up additional retail outposts, or dispensaries. PharmaCann delayed construction on their Staunton headquarters because of a gas line running through the property, and asked for an extension to complete permitting requirements. But by June of 2020, the board decided PharmaCann had taken too long, and rescinded their license. PharmaCann sued. While the litigation played out –
PREISS: The courts had stayed the Board of Pharmacy's ability to identify another entity to run a medical cannabis business.
That litigation finally ended last year, when PharmaCann lost their appeal. Preiss said they hope to have a replacement chosen in the first half of this year. And one homegrown enterprise is poised to throw their hat in the ring.
TANNER JOHNSON: And we were kind of in limbo for multiple years, waiting for this to all settle.
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Tanner Johnson is the CEO of Pure Shenandoah, a family-run hemp and CBD company based in a historic industrial building in Elkton, just east of Harrisonburg, where you can hear a cannabis oil extractor running in the background. Pure Shenandoah tried applying for the pharmaceutical processor license back in 2020, before it got tied up in court – and they're eager for another shot.
JOHNSON: We've already lined up multiple facilities that we could retrofit. We've got multiple pieces of land that we can build on. We're narrowing in exactly where we want to be, but for the most part, our home base is going to be in Harrisonburg.
If their application wins, Pure Shenandoah would become the first local, Virginia-based company authorized to sell medical marijuana in the state. Johnson envisions setting up dispensaries in Staunton, Winchester, Charlottesville, and Fredericksburg. He and his team have been talking to politicians while the local medical program and entire recreational market have been delayed. One of the misconceptions he hopes to break down is the idea that there's a big difference between medical and recreational products. In this illustration, he uses the term pre-roll – what the less cultured among us might call a joint.
JOHNSON: Imagine you have a pre-roll in your hand. You just bought it from a licensed dispensary. You're in your house, and everything's legal. … You've been on your feet all day. Your knees are hurting. Your back hurts. You're anxious about the next day because you know it's going to be a big day. You turn to that cannabis and you smoke a little bit. You feel better, the pain goes away, the anxiety might go away. You say, "hey, I can get through this." People would say that's a medicinal use of cannabis, and I would agree with that, too. Now, that same pre-roll, that same person heading out to a concert, smokes that pre-roll so it can be a little bit more fun, now that's a recreational use, pretty much by definition. What changed?
I asked Preiss about where this legislative ambiguity about recreational cannabis leaves his agency. He said, for now, they have plenty on their plate with taking over the medical side.
PREISS: We're certainly capable of standing up an adult use retail market, but of course, that's a decision for elected officials, both in the General Assembly and the administration. I can tell you that there is still great interest in the legislature for enacting a law that would create an adult-use retail market. … Time will tell whether there can be a proposal that generates sufficient support to become law.
For updates on the nebulized – I mean, nebulous landscape of cannabis regulation, you can check out the authority's LinkedIn page, and the lobbying and trade organization, the Virginia Cannabis Association.
