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Marijuana Possession and Cultivation Could Be Legal By July

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Marijuana was originally scheduled to become fully legal in Virginia in 2024, but now Governor Northam has listened to advocates and is now working to move up the timeline, potentially making it legal this summer.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam amended legislation to accelerate the legalization of marijuana possession and home cultivation in the state to July as opposed to 2024.

“Virginia will become the 16th state to legalize marijuana — and these changes will ensure we do it with a focus on public safety, public health, and social justice,” Northam stated in a release.

The governor proposed changes to House Bill 2312 and Senate Bill 1406, which passed earlier this year during the Virginia General Assembly’s special session. The bills legalized marijuana possession and sales by Jan. 1, 2024, but marijuana legalization advocates and Democratic lawmakers lobbied to push up the date for possession. 

“This is an historic milestone for racial justice and civil rights, following years of campaigning from advocates and community groups and a strong push by the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus,” the group Marijuana Justice stated in a press release. 

Marijuana Justice seeks to legalize the use and possession of marijuana. The group advocates for communities most impacted by the criminalization of drugs with their “legalize it right” campaign.

The bills allow adults 21 years of age or older to legally possess up to one ounce of marijuana if they don’t intend to distribute the substance. Virginia decriminalized marijuana last year and reduced possession penalties to a $25 civil penalty and no jail time for amounts up to an ounce. In the past, possessing up to half an ounce could lead to a $500 fine and 30 days in jail. 

Individuals can cultivate up to four cannabis plants without legal repercussion, with punishments ranging from misdemeanors to jail time if over the limit. The governor’s amendments would allow households to grow up to four plants beginning July 1. The plants would need to be labeled with identification information, out of sight from public view, and out of range of people under the age of 21.

Legislators will review the governor’s proposals during the General Assembly’s reconvened session on April 7, according to Del. Kaye Kory, D-Falls Church, one of more than two dozen legislators who sponsored the House bill. 

Chelsea Higgs Wise, executive director of Marijuana Justice, said legalizing simple marijuana possession now rather than later is important for racial justice. 

“Waiting until 2024 to legalize simple possession and therefore stop the desperate policing is allowing this continued bias enforcement against Black Virginians to continue for three years,” Wise said. 

Accelerating the legislative timeline is key, Kory said. 

“The figures show that it is much more common for a Black or Brown person to be charged with possession,” Kory said. 

A state study released last year found that from 2010 to 2019 the average arrest rate of Black Virginians for marijuana possession was more than three times higher than that of white residents for the same crime — 6.3 per 1,000 Black individuals and 1.8 per 1,000 white people. This is despite the fact that Black Virginians use marijuana at similar rates as white residents. The conviction rate was also higher for Black individuals. Northam stated that people of color were still disproportionately cited for possession even after marijuana was decriminalized.

The original legislation established the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority as the regulatory structure for the manufacture and retail sale of marijuana and marijuana products. 

The governor’s amendments would allow the authority to revoke a company’s business license if it interfered with union organizing efforts; failed to pay a prevailing wage as defined by the U.S. Department of Labor; or classified more than 10% of employees as independent contractors.

Lawmakers grappled with the dangers of juvenile use of marijuana, Kory said, and the impact of use on developing brains. 

Marijuana Justice wants to remove the delinquency charge that designates marijuana possession a crime, not a civil penalty, if committed by someone underage. The penalty is still up to $25. 

“Instead of punishment, young people should be evaluated for appropriate services that address the root causes of their usage,” Marijuana Justice stated.

The amendments would fund a public awareness campaign on the health and safety risks of marijuana. The changes also would train law enforcement officers to recognize and prevent drugged driving. Northam stated that his amendments include “explicit language directing ongoing support for public health education.”

The bill established a Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Board tasked with providing youth mentoring programs to marginalized youth and those in foster care, as well as providing scholarships to children who have been negatively impacted by marijuana in their family or community. 

The current expungement of marijuana-related crimes is set for July 1, 2025. Northam’s new amendments call for marijuana-related criminal records to be expunged and sealed “as soon as state agencies are able” and to “simplify the criteria” for when records can be sealed. This will allow individuals convicted with marijuana offenses to be resentenced, according to the new amendment.

The bills originally passed along party lines. No Republicans voted for either bill, and several Democrats in the House did not vote on either measure. Sens. Richard Stuart, R-Montross, and Jill Vogel, R-Warrenton, stated that the governor’s amendments helped assuage their original concerns.

The conservative, faith-based organization The Family Foundation told supporters Thursday to contact their representatives and urge them to vote against the accelerated timeline. 

The organization stated that violent and nonviolent crime rates have increased in states that have legalized marijuana, citing an opinion piece from a police defense group.

“It’s always been about generating more tax revenue to finance the ever-expanding state bureaucracy, creating massive fortunes for those who would use marijuana (like gambling) to prey on our most vulnerable citizens, and catering to a generation increasingly void of moral standards,” stated Victoria Cobb, the foundation’s president.

Written by Sam Fowler, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Members of the group Marijuana Justice at a press conference in January 2020 to support the legalization of marijuana in the commonwealth. Photo by Emma Gauthier/CNS.

The End Of Virginia’s Death Penalty

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Thanks to Governor Ralph Northam and the General Assembly, Virginia’s long tradition of imposing the death penalty is headed for a permanent end in the near future. We look back at the history to see why this is a positive development for the commonwealth.

With Governor Ralph Northam expected to sign a bill that passed through the General Assembly earlier this year, abolition of the death penalty in Virginia seems all but certain.

“It’s really a revolution in criminal justice reform for Virginia, because we’ve executed more people in Virginia than in any other state, including Texas,” said Dale Brumfield, field director for Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP) and an expert on capital punishment in Virginia.

“We’ve executed 1,390 people since 1608, so for Virginia, the former Capitol of the Confederacy, the most killing state in the United States, to end it is just a jaw-dropping revolution in criminal justice reform.”

As Virginia moves into a new era of criminal justice reform, Brumfield reflects on a painful past.

1608 – Captain George Kendall is executed by firing squad for treason in colonial Jamestown.

1632 – Jane Champion becomes the first woman executed in the state of Virginia.

“She was a married woman, but she had an affair with another colonist in Jamestown, and she got pregnant by him,” Brumfield said. “So she was facing double jeopardy: she got pregnant out of wedlock by another man, and she was having an affair, so she was in a no-win situation.” 

Champion concealed the birth of her child, which was a capital offense in and of itself at the time. She was eventually convicted for infanticide, but Brumfield says that there is compelling historical evidence to suggest the child was stillborn. As for the man she had an affair with?

“[He] was supposedly scheduled to be hanged also, but there’s no record of him ever being hanged,” Brumfield said. “They don’t think he ever was.”

So began a long and painful history of unjust executions in Virginia.

“Since then, Virginia just started executing like sons of bitches,” Brumfield said. “We just kept killing and killing and killing. Throughout the colonial era, Virginia executed 500 slaves before emancipation. That accounts for 86 percent of all slave executions nationwide.” 

According to Brumfield, there were 66 crimes that counted as capital offenses for enslaved people. “They couldn’t turn around without committing a capital crime back in those days,” he said.

1787 – Virginia executes a 12 year-old enslaved boy for murder. Virginia also executed a 13 year-old enslaved boy for arson.

The state-sponsored killings continued through the Civil War and Jim Crow era.

“The Jim Crow era was an interesting era for Virginia and the death penalty, in that the link to lynching becomes very apparent,” Brumfield said.

During that period, there were about 100 lynchings in Virginia. Though it sounds like a lot, the number is relatively low compared to states like Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas, which saw 400 to 500 each. Brumfield says this is in part because the lynchings went by another name in Virginia: state executions for capital offenses.

“One of the reasons was Virginia got so good at catching, convicting, and executing young Black men for crimes against whites, usually against white women,” he said. “They could do it so fast that it was legal lynching.”

1908 – Virginia begins use of the electric chair for executions. Of the first 100 people executed in it from 1908 to 1920, 87 were Black – the electric chair became a “tangible symbol of white supremacy.” 

In these trials, Black men were accused of crimes ranging from rape to scaring a white schoolgirl (attempted criminal assault, officially). Most of the time, these men had no legal counsel. Often, they were mentally disabled, or their conviction relied on the testimony of a child, if there were eyewitnesses at all. 

“The trials would last less than an hour,” Brumfield said. “The jury would be out five or six minutes and would come back with a verdict of death. Thirty days later, that Black man is put to death.” 

Of the 89 women who were executed in all of Virginia’s history, 11 were white, and the rest were Black. Of those 11 white women, nine were executed prior to 1800.

“White women were like unicorns on death row.”

1962 – Electric chair “loses elegance”; Virginia places de facto moratorium on executions.

1972 – US Supreme Court rules that death penalty is unconstitutional.

1976 – US Supreme Court reverses itself, allowing for states to resume executions with mandates implemented on how they must apply capital punishment.

1982 – Virginia resumes executions with Frank Coppola, a white man.

1982-2017 – Virginia executes 113 people, second only to Texas during the same time frame. 

“It’s a horrible history,” Brumfield said. “Any reasonable person would look at Virginia’s execution history and just be outraged by it.” 

So why, after 413 years of capital punishment, are talks about its abolition possible now? Brumfield says a few factors converged at just the right time.

“Unfortunately, it took the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor to shine a spotlight on criminal justice reform and Black Lives Matter,” he said. The BLM movement played a huge role in highlighting the racial disparities in the criminal justice system, of which capital punishment is a key part.

Weirdly, Brumfield says, Northam’s blackface scandal also played a significant role.

“That made governor Northam dedicated to removing racial disparities from our laws and statutes in Virginia,” he said. “When he came out that day out of nowhere, and said ‘I’m supporting abolishing the death penalty in Virginia this General Assembly session,’ it caught us all off guard. But what a happy way to be caught off guard, to have the governor come out and say that and be actively involved in pushing this legislation through the General Assembly.”

Lastly, the Trump administration’s execution at the federal level of 13 people in the last six months of his presidency was eye-opening to people, Brumfield said.

“Many people were horrified by that assembly line of executions going on.”

Brumfield said that the ultimate decision to abolish the death penalty by the Virginia legislature would not have been possible without the advocacy of several groups besides VADP, including the Virginia Interfaith Center and the ACLU of Virginia. 

When Brumfield joined VADP four years ago, his first task was to talk to Republican and Libertarian groups around the state about the death penalty, “about the process and how screwed up and bloated and corrupted it was.” That’s over now, though VADP will continue to exist for at least a year to defend the decision if need be.

“I kind of worked myself right out of a job,” Brumfield said.

Top Photo: Florida Department of Corrections/Doug Smith. Public Domain, via Wikimedia

Virginia Will Join 22 States In Abolishing The Death Penalty

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Bills abolishing the death penalty within the Commonwealth have passed both houses of the General Assembly, and Governor Ralph Northam has already expressed his support. His signature will make Virginia the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty.

Virginia will become the 23rd state to abolish the death penalty after two bills passed both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly on Monday. 

In a release issued earlier this month, Gov. Ralph Northam said he looks forward to signing a legislation that outlaws the death penalty. 

Under current state law, an offender convicted of a Class 1 felony who is at least 18 years of age at the time of the offense and without an intellectual disability faces a sentence of life imprisonment or death. 

The identical House and Senate bills eliminate death from the list of possible punishments for a Class 1 felony. The bills do not allow the possibility of parole, good conduct allowance, or earned sentence credits. The measures will also reclassify capital murders to aggravated murders. 

The move will change the sentence for the two remaining inmates on death row to life imprisonment without eligibility of parole, good conduct allowance, or earned sentence credits. 

House Bill 2263, introduced by Del. Mike Mullin, D-Newport News, passed the Senate Monday on a 22-16 vote following a lengthy floor debate. While both parties reached an agreement on eliminating the death penalty, Republicans argued for a proposed amendment to remove the possibility of a shortened life sentence. 

Under current state law, judges are able to suspend part of life sentences, with the exception of the murder of a law enforcement officer. Neither bill will change this policy.

In Monday’s hearing, Sen. William Stanley, R-Franklin, argued for a floor substitute that would replace capital murder charges with a mandatory minimum life sentence. The government should not have the ability to sentence people to death due to the possibility of false convictions, but those who commit “heinous” crimes should never face the possibility of parole, he said. 

“If you kill multiple people, or under the circumstances under our death penalty statute, you should not see the light of day,” Stanley said. “You should not taste liberty and freedom again.” 

Sen. Scott Surovell

Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, who sponsored the Senate bill that passed the House, said adopting Stanley’s amendment would introduce 14 new mandatory minimum life sentences. 

“I think it’s awfully presumptuous for us to just decide that these 14 situations deserve this one and only punishment,” Surovell said. 

Sen. Joseph D. Morrissey, D-Richmond, furthered the argument against the amendment by mentioning a Washington Post article on the recent release of Joe Ligon at age 83. Ligon was sentenced to life imprisonment at 15 years old, pleading guilty under the impression that he would be eligible for parole 10 years later, Morrissey said. He was released from prison after serving 68 years. 

“That seems to be inconsistent,” Morrissey said, referring to Stanley’s argument that while juries can get it wrong, a convicted person sentenced to life imprisonment should never be able to seek parole. “If you get it wrong, and somebody is executed, you can also get it wrong when you sentence somebody to life in prison.” 

Judges currently have the authority to ensure life sentences and will have the same authority with the bill’s passage, Surovell said.

The floor substitute by Stanley was rejected. 

“Prison Bars Jail Cell” by JobsForFelonsHub is licensed with CC BY 2.0

Concluding the hearing, Surovell offered final remarks on the importance of Virginia’s step to abolish the death penalty. He believes the new measure speaks to the commonwealth’s humility and value of human life. 

“It says a lot about how our commonwealth is going to move past some of our darkest moments in terms of how this punishment was applied and who it was applied to,” Surovell said. 

Surovell hopes that the measure’s passage will “send a message to the rest of the world that Virginia is back to leading on criminal justice.”

Northam; House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw issued a joint statement regarding the legislations’ passages. 

“Thanks to the vote of lawmakers in both chambers, Virginia will join 22 other states that have ended use of the death penalty. This is an important step forward in ensuring that our criminal justice system is fair and equitable to all.”

Written by Christina Amano Dolan, Capital News Service. Top Photo courtesy of the Virginia General Assembly website.

Virginia House and Senate Advance Bills to Abolish Death Penalty

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Governor Northam has voiced his support for abolishing the death penalty in Virginia, and now both houses of the General Assembly have voted in favor of abolishing it as well.

After over 400 years of conducting more executions than any other state, Virginia may become the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. 

The Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates each passed identical bills this week to abolish the death penalty. Virginia would become the 23rd state to abolish capital punishment if either bill advances in the other’s chamber and is signed by the governor.

Under current state law, an offender convicted of a Class 1 felony who is at least 18 years of age at the time of the offense and without an intellectual disability faces a sentence of life imprisonment or death. 

The House and Senate bills eliminate death from the list of possible punishments for a Class 1 felony. The bills do not allow the possibility of parole, good conduct allowance, or earned sentence credits. Judges are able to suspend part of life sentences, with the exception of the murder of a law enforcement officer. 

Senate Bill 1165, introduced by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, passed the Senate on a 21-17 vote. House Bill 2263, introduced by Del. Mike Mullin, D-Newport News, passed the House Friday on a 57-41 vote. Three Republicans supported the House measure.

Any person previously sentenced to death by July 1 will have their sentence changed to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole, good conduct allowance, or earned sentence credits. According to the House bill’s impact statement, there are two Virginia inmates on death row, but no execution date has been set for these inmates as of December. 

In a floor hearing earlier this week, Mullin discussed how the measure would ultimately save money, as the death penalty is a “huge financial burden on the commonwealth.” Virginia spends approximately $3.9 million annually to maintain four capital defender offices, which only handles capital cases, according to the House bill’s fiscal impact statement. The measure will likely eliminate the need for these offices. 

“If we keep the death penalty in place, we are prolonging an expensive, ineffective, and flawed system,” Mullin said. 

Del. Michael Mullin

Mullin said Virginia has a dark history of extreme racial bias and occasional false convictions within the judicial system. 

Referencing the 1985 case of Earl Washington, Mullin argued the commonwealth “knows the risks of killing an innocent person very well.” Washington, a wrongfully convicted death row inmate, came within nine days of his execution. 

“Perhaps the strongest argument for abolishing the death penalty is that a justice system without the death penalty allows us the possibility of being wrong,” Mullin said. 

In a debate during Friday’s House vote, defenders of the death penalty called attention to the victims of capital cases. Del. Jason S. Miyares, R-Virginia Beach, told his colleagues that “these victims are begging not to be forgotten.” He argued that executing those who commit the “ultimate crimes” is justice, not vengeance. 

“That’s what the death penalty is … it’s not revenge, it’s not eye for an eye, it’s our society, our civilization, holding someone accountable for their actions, allowing our juries to decide about the ultimate punishment,” Miyares said. 

Del. Mark H. Levine, D-Alexandria, a supporter of the bill, concluded the debate by speaking of his own painful experience. Speaking of his sister’s murder, Levine argued that the bill isn’t about him, his sister, or the victims, but about the state’s potential to kill innocent people. 

“I’ve seen evil, I’ve looked it in the face,” Levine said. “I know evil exists, there is no dispute about that. But taking an innocent person’s life — that’s evil, and it would be evil to be done by this General Assembly.” 

Gov. Ralph Northam said in a press release earlier this week that he looks forward to signing the bill into law. 

“The practice is fundamentally inequitable,” Northam said. “It is inhumane. It is ineffective. And we know that in some cases, people on death row have been found innocent.”

Written by Christina Amano Dolan, Capital News Service. Top Photo courtesy of the Virginia General Assembly website.

Vaccines Are Coming — Now What?

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With Pfizer and Moderna vaccines reaching increasing numbers of Virginians, the commonwealth is eager to be through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it’s become clear in recent weeks that we still have a long road ahead.

As Virginia grapples with record numbers of COVID-19 cases, overwhelmed hospitals and medical staff, and lagging vaccine distribution – there is still a long road ahead before a return to what feels like normal life.

After the FDA authorized the distribution of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines in mid-December, a sense of optimism spread throughout the country as the federal government announced 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of the year.

But once again, the pandemic brought its own set of unexpected challenges and by the time the ball dropped on Dec. 31, only a little over 2 million people had received shots. 

Virginia wasn’t exempt from this nationwide lag. As of Jan. 10, the state received about 510,000 vaccine doses from the two manufacturers. But only 177,945 doses were administered to people in the Commonwealth. The significant gap between the doses received and administered has been attributed to a combination of a temporary glitch in the state’s recording system, some facilities holding onto second doses, the ongoing surge of COVID-19 cases, and challenges faced by facilities administering the vaccine. 

Despite the lags, Richmond and Henrico Health Director Danny Avula, recently tapped by Governor Ralph Northam to lead the state’s vaccination effort, remains confident that all Virginians should have access to the vaccine by summertime. 

“I think this is probably the most hopeful time that we have seen since the pandemic began last March, because now there’s actually a potential way out,” Dr. Avula says. “If we just get to a place where we have enough of the population vaccinated, we will slow transmission enough to see the pandemic start to subside. Now that question is, can we get enough people vaccinated?”

Systems built by the federal government through the CDC have not worked as smoothly as they needed to, Dr. Avula says, explaining the reasons behind the statewide lags. While the CDC is now revising these systems, so is Virginia.

Right now, the Commonwealth is getting about 110,000 doses of vaccine a week, between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines – and that number is expected to increase. 

As the production and delivery of vaccines ramp up, so will the weekly vaccine allocation. At a press conference on Jan. 6, Governor Northam announced a new initial goal of 25,000 vaccinations a day – expecting that goal to increase to 50,000 as they get more supply. If the state manages to reach that goal, all Virginians could have access to the vaccine by summertime. 

“It’s still going to take some time to get everyone who wants the vaccine,” Gov. Northam said, during a virtual co-event featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci on Jan. 8. “We’re committed to getting there as expeditiously and accurately as possible. And I hope the majority of Virginians will get vaccinated. The vaccine is the way to stop this virus. It’s our path forward to recovery. And it’s the clearest way we’re going to get back to something that feels like normal.” 

A staffer at Central State Hospital in Petersburg receives a vaccine. Photo via Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services/Twitter

But there is still a long – social distanced and masked-up – road ahead. The distribution and administration of the vaccine is complex, as both vaccines require two doses, which must be spaced out. The Pfizer vaccine requires a second dose, also called a boost, 21 days after the first shot, while the Moderna vaccine requires a boost 28 days after the first dose. 

Studies show that effectiveness is highest 14 days after the second dose, explains Amy Popovich, nurse manager of the Henrico County and Richmond City Health districts. 

“If you increase that timeline to when the general public will have access to the vaccine … it details how important it will be for everyone to wear masks for some months to come,” Popovich says. 

Many questions remain unanswered. While scientists know the vaccines are effective protecting people from getting sick from COVID-19, Lisa M. Lee, an epidemiologist at Virginia Tech explains, it is still unknown whether it will protect us from getting infected, or from transmitting the virus to others. 

This difference is key as we attempt to reach herd immunity – having at least 70 percent of the population immune from the virus. 

“I think of it kind of like a doughnut. In the middle are people who can’t get vaccinated, and around that middle are all the people in the community who have immunity. They’ve either had the disease or … they got the vaccine, however they got it. But they have immunity,” Dr. Lee says. “And then … if a new infection comes into the community, it bounces off the edge of the doughnut and can’t get to the people in the middle. And that way, it protects them. And that’s the doughnut part, is the 75 to 85 percent.”

As long as that determinant remains unknown, experts are unanimous: continuing to wear masks and social distance will be critical to reach herd immunity. 

“We want you all to get vaccinated for your own protection, for that of your family and for your community,” Dr. Fauci said during the Jan. 8 event with Governor Northam. “However, we must remember that this is not a substitute, because until we get the overwhelming majority of the population in this country … there still will be the danger lurking in the community about transmitting viruses. And for that reason we need to continue to adhere to public health measures, until we get this outbreak completely crushed.”

A return to normalcy feels further and further away as the state attempts to speed up vaccine distribution. As many local health districts still remain focused on vaccinating eligible citizens in Phase 1a, the Virginia Department of Health announced that 11 health districts would begin Phase 1b vaccinations the week of Jan. 11. 

Governor Northam announced that 1.2 million people will be eligible for the vaccine in Phase 1b – a group that will include frontline essential workers, people age 65 and older, and people living in correctional facilities, homeless shelters, or migrant labor camps.

“I think people ought to recognize that this is an extraordinarily complex logistical challenge — to do vaccination at this scale across the state, with this many different communities, with different capacities, with different needs, with different philosophies,” Dr. Avula says. 

All areas of the Commonwealth are expected to move to Phase 1b before the end of January, according to VDH. As for a potential beginning date for Phase 1c, which would include 2.5 million Virginians, the timeline becomes blurry. VDH announced it will take between several weeks and multiple months to vaccinate Virginians who fall into Phase 1b. 

Just as Virginia needed some time to hone its testing infrastructure, the trajectory on vaccines is going to follow a similar curve, as the state moves through its phases. In two to three months, we might witness a flip, where the supply of vaccines will exceed the demand, Dr. Avula says.

A Virginia Department of Corrections employee receives a vaccine. Photo via VADOC/Twitter

Then, there will only remain one challenge: overcoming the skepticism toward the vaccine, especially within minority groups. 

“I think it’s important [in] public health to understand that there’s legitimate hesitancy, particularly in our Black and brown communities,” Nurse Manager Popovich says. “And it’s our role as public health to ensure that there is equitable access to facts and to the information that’s coming out from reliable sources.”

To address vaccine hesitancy within her own health district, teams connected with individuals and communities through listening sessions, “vaccine town halls,” where health district staff answer questions.  But Popovich recognizes that to overcome the hesitancy, knowing someone who got the vaccine will be the most efficient to increase trust. 

“Then my hope is that that’s what happens in the general population as we start to open up other phases,” said Dr. Avula. “You’re gonna have people who are just more hesitant, and want to see it and want to make sure that the people they know aren’t harmed. So they’re gonna wait, and they’re gonna watch. And hopefully, as they see that people are having good success with vaccination, they will want to get vaccinated themselves.”

In just a couple of weeks, we can expect to see new vaccines entering the playing field: the Janssen vaccine, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson, and the AstraZeneca vaccine — which has already been approved in the UK, Mexico, and other countries, but still needs to complete the US approval process.

“There is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel,” Popovich says. “Also, we are in the highest number of cases of COVID-19 across our nation, and we hit the devastating mark of one in 1,000 Americans having passed because of COVID-19. And so [there is] a sense of urgency to continue to be diligent, as exhausting as it is. To wear masks, to social distance, to make the safest choice possible given the situation. Because lives are at stake.”

Top Photo via Schott.com

Northam Hopes To Bring Legal Recreational Marijuana To Virginia In 2021

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After signing a bill into law that decriminalized marijuana earlier this year, Governor Ralph Northam formally voiced his support for fully legalizing marijuana in Virginia next year. This is welcome news both for civil rights advocates and cannabis enthusiasts in the Commonwealth.

Recreational marijuana use may be legal in Virginia by 2021 — letting the Commonwealth join states such as Colorado and California, as well as neighboring Washington DC, that allow their residents to freely use cannabis. 

Governor Ralph Northam released a report by the Virginia Marijuana Legalization Work Group on Monday, November 30, which outlines five key principles the governor wants to see in any proposed marijuana legislation. These principles are: social and racial equity, public health efforts to curb substance abuse in schools, age limits and ID checks for marijuana purchasers, upholding the Virginia Indoor Clean Air Act — which prohibits cigarette smoking indoors — and ongoing data collection on health, safety, and equity.

House majority leader Charniele Herring sponsored the bill that decriminalized marijuana, which was passed during the 2020 session. Herring is also a sponsor of the studies currently being done on legalization.

“This is a thorough study, so there’s no need to delay. The draft study was 175 pages,” Herring said. 

Herring says that legalization of marijuana will be beneficial for the state.

“It’s a revenue producer, and there are some benefits to its medicinal use,” Herring said. 

Del. Charniele Herring. Photo via Facebook.

Virginia already allows medical marijuana use, but the proposed legislation would legalize it entirely. 

Legalization of marijuana could also be beneficial for communities of color, specifically Black communities, who face harsher penalties for using the drug than white communities. Black Virginians are arrested and convicted for marijuana use at more than three times the rate of white Virginians, according to a report by JLARC. 

“There’s been a disproportionate impact on communities of color when it comes to enforcing marijuana laws,” Herring said. “People of color don’t use it more than white people do, but our prosecutions are disproportionate, and we will certainly combat the issue.”

Herring says that there is little that can be done for those who are currently serving jail sentences for possession of marijuana, but that their sentences can be expunged, or the records sealed, when they get out. Marijuana sentences are generally under one year and are served in jails rather than prisons. Northam’s press release states that sealing or expunging records of past marijuana convictions is one of the initiatives that the legislation should include.

Governor Ralph Northam. RVA Mag file photo.

On November 16, Northam formally voiced his support for the legalization, saying he intended to introduce and support legislation to legalize marijuana for adult use in Virginia. 

“Our Commonwealth has the opportunity to be the first state in the South to take this step, and we will lead with a focus on equity, public health, and public safety,” Northam said in the press release. 

Since 2012, 15 states and the District of Columbia have legalized all marijuana use, while 36 states — including Virginia — have legalized medical use. 

Top Photo by Next Green Wave on Unsplash