Marijuana Moment: Virginia Lawmakers Weigh Putting Marijuana Sales Legalization Into Budget Bill Next Month To Force Governor’s Hand Following Veto

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Virginia’s governor may have vetoed bills to legalize recreational marijuana sales last week, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still happen this year. Top lawmakers are openly discussing the possibility of including provisions to enact the cannabis reform in still-outstanding budget legislation that they are due to pass by July 1.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D), for example, said the issue is not “dead” for 2026 yet.

“It is possible for us, however, to put policy like that into the budget and adopt it in the budget and then put that on the governor’s desk,” Surovell, who also chairs the Courts of Justice Committee, told WJLA-TV on Tuesday. “So I wouldn’t say that the cannabis retail market is totally dead yet for this year.”

The governor’s office did not respond to the news outlet’s request for comment about whether she would sign or veto a budget that includes provisions to legalize adult-use marijuana sales despite her recent veto.

Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas (D) said that the governor’s vetoes of legislation on marijuana sales and other issues means that the state is “further off” in generating revenue that those reforms would have provided toward the annual budget.

“But here’s the good news,” she said in a social media thread. “We are in special session so the Gov can send us bills at anytime to correct vetoes and restore the money to the budget. She’s said she supports many of these initiatives so she should send us bills that incorporate our legislative work to do them now.”

But here’s the good news. We are in special session so the Gov can send us bills at anytime to correct vetoes and restore the money to the budget. She’s said she supports many of these initiatives so she should send us bills that incorporate our legislative work to do them now.

— L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) May 21, 2026

“Now that you have read each bill line by line, it’s time to focus on the budget,” Lucas, whose unregulated cannabis store was the target of a recent federal raid for reasons that still have not been officially explained, said in a separate post. “Your Secretary of Finance says that we need more revenue and the House budget is negative by $400M in the out years. That’s not fiscally responsible and won’t happen on my watch.”

Now that you have read each bill line by line, it’s time to focus on the budget. Your Secretary of Finance says that we need more revenue and the House budget is negative by $400M in the out years. That’s not fiscally responsible and won’t happen on my watch. https://t.co/p2zHLWi8S0

— L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) April 14, 2026

The Senate president pro tem further poked Spanberger in another post, saying the governor is “wrong on the policy and knows Virginians will cook her if there is a government shutdown.”

That’s the budget hold up!! Once again, the Governor is wrong on the policy and knows Virginians will cook her if there is a government shutdown.

Also still waiting on your reforecast?

— L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) May 27, 2026

Lawmakers are expected to reconvene in June to tackle the budget. If they finalize that legislation close to the July 1 deadline, it could effectively force the governor to quickly sign any deal, even if she doesn’t like its provisions, in order to avoid a potential shutdown of the state government.

Spanberger, for her part, pushed back on the idea that lawmakers would put marijuana in the budget as a tactic to force her to sign it.

“I have certainly heard inklings of the same thing…whether it is the cannabis bill or any other bill,” the governor told The Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We could have had a bill, right? Just as the legislature didn’t like my amendments, I didn’t think their bill was ready, right?… They passed by my amendments, didn’t even take them up—their prerogative.”

Lawmakers passed the cannabis sales bills in March, but the governor then suggested changes to the legalization proposal—including delaying the start date for sales by six months, increasing taxes and instituting new criminal penalties for cannabis consumers. The legislature last month declined to take up the amendments during a one-day reconvened session, however, effectively rejecting them. Spanberger then issued a veto last week.

“The idea that we, that members of the General Assembly would be holding localities and their budgets in this purgatory space so that they can try and jam me with a budget is two things: one, kind of an outrageous possibility, and two, broadly something that most legislators I have spoken to wholly oppose,” Spanberger told The Times-Dispatch.

“The idea that you would basically do kind of Russian roulette with our budget, or a game of chicken with the state’s budget…that is an abuse of the process,” she said.

“The idea that you could rush through a cannabis bill and have, like, literal stores open by January just doesn’t recognize…everything that needs to happen. If I wanted to open an ice cream shop or a stationery store, very boring, not particularly melodramatic, certainly not a new industry, I’d be hard pressed to open one of those two shops between now and January, let alone one where the financing is a challenge…or the rent is a challenge…depending upon the mortgage constraints of the landlord. Not to mention standing up an entirely new law enforcement entity to enforce entirely new laws…the idea that you could just sort of jam that into a budget is, I think it’s unbelievable to me.”

House Speaker Don Scott (D) said he was not “surprised” by Spanberger’s vetoes of the cannabis and other bills this session, but was “disappointed” by some of them.

“But I’m not despair,” he said at an event about healthcare issues. “I think those issues can continue to be worked on and I think there are ways that we can continue to move forward on those issues.”

“We’ve been debating this same legislation for six sessions now,” JM Pedini, development director for the advocacy group NORML and executive director for Virginia NORML, told Marijuana Moment. “Claims that the state is somehow rushing or unprepared simply fall flat. NORML is committed to exploring every possible option to get this done in 2026. It’s long past time for Virginia to stop kicking this can down the road year after year after year.”

A recent survey found that bipartisan majorities of Virginia voters wanted Spanberger to sign the cannabis legislation into law, and that they specifically disagreed with her desire to slow the launch timeline for legal sales.

The governor recently acknowledged in an interview that “a lot of people are not pleased” with her veto of the cannabis legislation. “Friends and family are displeased as well,” she said.

Trent Woloveck, chief strategy officer with the cannabis company Jushi, told Marijuana Moment that he hopes that “both the administration and legislators understand the need for a regulated marketplace so that good actors can start to eradicate the ongoing public health and safety nightmare for Virginians across the Commonwealth.”

“The differences between the bill passed by the General Assembly and the substitute proposed by the governor are not that far off, so I am hopeful a compromise is possible during the special session,” he said.

Spanberger has repeatedly responded to criticism of her cannabis amendments from the bill sponsors and advocates by saying the suggested changes came after she spoke to the leaders of other states that have already implemented adult-use marijuana markets.

A spokesperson for Spanberger was not able to name any other governors she talked to about cannabis in response to a question from Marijuana Moment last week, however.

The governor separately recently sought to explain her veto in an earlier interview last week, reiterating that she supports launching a legal cannabis market but worried about what she called a “rushed timeline” and “far more stores across Virginia” than she thinks are appropriate.

Prior to vetoing the cannabis commerce bill, the governor did sign separate legislation to provide resentencing relief for people with past cannabis convictions.

Personal marijuana possession and home cultivation of marijuana has been legal in Virginia since 2021, but then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) twice vetoed bills to provide consumers with a way to legally purchase regulated adult-use cannabis.

Sen. Lashrecse Aird (D), and Del. Paul Krizek (D), the sponsors of the legalization bills, had urged colleagues to vote against the governor’s amendments last month—even if that meant risking a veto from Spanberger when the legislation returned to her desk, which has now occurred.

Here are the other key details of the cannabis bills—SB 542 and HB 642—as approved by lawmakers and with the governor’s suggested amendments:

• Lawmakers voted to allow adults to be able to purchase up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana in a single transaction, or up to an equivalent amount of other cannabis products as determined by regulators. That would represent an increase from the limit in current law of 1 ounce. The governor, however, wanted the amount increased to only 2 ounces.
• Under the legislature’s plan, legal sales could begin on January 1, 2027, but the governor proposed to push that back to July 1, 2027.
• Lawmakers voted to impose an excise tax of 6 percent on cannabis sales as well as a 5.3 percent retail sales and use tax, while allowing municipalities to set an additional local tax of up to 3.5 percent. The governor’s plan was largely the same, though it would have increased the excise tax to 8 percent starting on July 1, 2029.
• Under the legislation as approved by lawmakers, revenue would have been distributed to the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund (30 percent), early childhood education (40 percent), the Department of Behavioral & Developmental Health Services (25 percent) and public health initiatives (5 percent). The governor, however, wanted to put all revenue into the general fund while earmarking it “for purposes such as early childhood education, behavioral health, public health awareness, prevention, treatment, and recovery services, workforce development, reentry, indigent criminal defense, and targeted reinvestment in historically disadvantaged communities.”
• The Virginia Cannabis Control Authority would have overseen licensing and regulation of the new industry, and would have also taken on oversight of hemp, which is currently under the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
• Local governments could not have opted out of allowing marijuana businesses to operate in their area.
• Delivery services would have been allowed.
• Serving sizes would have been capped at 10 milligrams THC, with no more than 100 mg THC per package.
• The governor proposed to make public marijuana use a class 4 criminal misdemeanor instead of civil violation punishable by a $25 fine as under current law. She also wanted to make possessing cannabis by people under the age of 21 a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable with a mandatory minimum fine of $500 or 50 hours of community service, as well as the suspension of drivers licenses for at least six months. Illegally selling or distributing 50 pounds or more of marijuana would have been a class 2 felony punishable by life in prison.
• The governor sought to eliminate support for the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund.
• Existing medical cannabis operators could have entered the adult-use market if they pay a licensing conversion fee that was set at $10 million.
• Cannabis businesses would have had to establish labor peace agreements with workers.
• As passed by lawmakers, the bill would have directed a legislative commission to study adding on-site consumption licenses and microbusiness cannabis event permits that would allow licensees to conduct sales at venues like farmers markets or pop-up locations, but the governor proposed to remove that language.

A coalition of cannabis reform organizations sent the governor a letter this month urging her not to veto the sales legalization legislation even though her amendments were rejected.

“Together, these bills address the real issues surrounding cannabis in the Commonwealth today: an already-existing, unregulated marijuana market operating openly across the state while consumers, communities, and law enforcement are left without the protections of a legal framework,” the groups wrote.

“Let’s be clear: these bills do not create a marijuana market in Virginia. That market already exists,” the letter said. “What these bills do is replace today’s predatory and unaccountable illicit operators with a regulated marketplace, enforceable rules, oversight, product safeguards, age verification, and the strict consumer safety standards already in use for Virginia medical cannabis.”

The letter was signed by Virginia NORML, Marijuana Justice, Virginia Cannabis Association, Marijuana Policy Project and other groups.

Separately, a coalition of hemp businesses that joined with a major alcohol retailer in asking Spanberger to veto the marijuana bill before she did so said the move presents an “opportunity” to craft better cannabis policy.

Meanwhile, the governor signed several other reform bills last month—including measures to protect the parental rights of marijuana consumers and allow patients to access medical cannabis in hospitals.

The post Virginia Lawmakers Weigh Putting Marijuana Sales Legalization Into Budget Bill Next Month To Force Governor’s Hand Following Veto appeared first on Marijuana Moment.

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