Virginia’s long-running effort to build a regulated cannabis marketplace has hit a new turning point this legislative session. Since adult possession became legal in 2021, lawmakers and stakeholders have spent years negotiating a retail framework to replace the...
With sea level rise becoming a growing threat to Virginia's coastal communities, activists want to see greater action -- and more funding -- for programs intended to mitigate the effects of climate change. "Animals have three choices when habitat changes: they can move, adapt or die," said Yorktown Watermen’s Museum Director of Education Mike...
In 2018, almost 20,000 people, most of them African American, were found guilty of marijuana possession in Virginia courts. The racial disparities where the state's marijuana convictions are concerned has led some state officials to consider decriminalizing and perhaps legalizing marijuana. Now that Democrats have won control of the General...
With cannabis decriminalization, cultivation, and legalization at the forefront of political conversations in Virginia, farmers and legislators are grappling with a changing legal and cultural landscape. “We do grams, eighths, quarters, half ounces, pounds, wholesale pounds -- however you want it,” Jacob Stretch said, standing between crates of...
According to US Census data, over 16 percent of Virginians now speak a language other than English in the home -- including a growing number of Arabic families. Nahlaa Alsilfih Alahmari and her husband, Abdullah Alahmari, are graduate students from Saudi Arabia. She is pursuing a doctorate in education at Virginia State University, and he is...
Roanoke’s Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center fights to stay open and save animals' lives in the midst of lawsuits from a local Bojangles’ owner who claims the center “increases noise” and “increases traffic.” The Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center has been helping the animals of Roanoke, Virginia for nearly two decades: anyone who finds an...
This may be the #MeToo era, but here in Virginia, the vast majority of rape cases are still unsolved, and the perpetrators remain unpunished. In the #MeToo era, survivors of sexual assault are feeling more empowered to come forward with their stories. Despite the social movement, though, sexual assaults and rapes have the lowest clearance rates...
2018 saw the highest number of pedestrian deaths on Virginia roads in ten years. Two major Richmond-area roads were among the deadliest in the state. On a Friday night in October, Katelyn Tilts was walking to a convenience store with a group of friends when she saw headlights coming at her. “A car came around the corner really quickly and was...
The requirement that Medicaid recipients work was a Republican condition of the program's expansion. But with the new Democrat-controlled General Assembly soon to be seated, Governor Northam no longer plans to enforce it. Virginia residents with Medicaid will not be required to work in order to keep their policies since Gov. Ralph Northam halted...
As we approach the start of the 2020 General Assembly session, here's an up-to-date look into an ongoing fight over guns that has the whole Commonwealth concerned. It has been a truly tumultuous month since Virginia’s November elections. Specifically, the conversation around the Second Amendment, gun ownership and potential gun control...
