This text was written by Gaspard Le Dem (@GLD_Live on Twitter) and initially Up to date by Outlaw Report.
As Virginia’s new legislative session will get underway, Republicans — emboldened after taking again the governor’s mansion and the Home of Delegates — are taking goal at hashish reforms handed by the Basic Meeting final 12 months.
GOP state lawmakers have pre-filed a number of measures that might roll again provisions from final 12 months’s legalization invoice, zeroing in on social fairness measures meant to deal with the adverse results of hashish prohibition on communities of colour.
Senate Minority Chief Tommy Norment (R-James Metropolis) has proposed laws to delete language from final 12 months’s invoice that directs 30% of tax income from forthcoming retail hashish gross sales to a fund created to reinvest in communities disproportionately focused by harsh drug legal guidelines.
Norment’s bill would put cash from the Hashish Fairness Reinvestment Fund again into the commonwealth’s normal fund, successfully defunding the initiative and rendering it ineffective. (In July, Gov. Northam appointed Janice Underwood, his Chief Variety, Fairness, and Inclusion Officer, to chair the reinvestment fund.)
The push to undo social fairness provisions of final 12 months’s legalization invoice has raised the alarm amongst advocates, who simply months in the past have been nonetheless reveling within the historic measure’s passage.
“It does really feel like a punch to the intestine to see how shortly this might all be deleted,” mentioned Chelsea Higgs Clever, government director of Marijuana Justice, a grassroots advocacy group that performed a key function in getting legalization handed within the commonwealth.
On Sunday night time, Higgs Clever joined different advocates for a digital “prep rally” to debate methods to maintain pushing for reform throughout the 2022 legislative session.
“We’re a lot on the protection proper now,” Higgs Clever mentioned. “I’m actually trying to guarantee that we will shield a number of the work that got here out of the [legalization] invoice final 12 months.”
Final 12 months’s hashish legal guidelines aren’t the one ones within the GOP’s crosshairs. One other bill pre-filed by Del. Ronnie Campbell (R-Rockbrige) seeks to repeal a 2020 legislation that barred Virginia police from utilizing the odor of hashish as a sole pretext to conduct searches and not using a warrant. Advocates for legal justice reform have lengthy argued that police use the scent of hashish as an excuse to make racially biased and sometimes deadly traffic stops.
André Hakes, president of the Virginia Affiliation of Prison Protection Legal professionals, mentioned that rolling again protections in opposition to hashish searches might result in extra arrests, prosecutions, and jail time for Virginians.
“It looks like a small factor, it appears form of technical, however it’s one thing that impacts an enormous variety of folks,” Hakes mentioned. “Anyone can get stopped for one thing very minor after which if you’re an individual of colour, or if you’re suspicious to the police for any purpose, you might be off to the races there.”
Some Republicans are additionally trying to sluggish Virginia’s roll in relation to launching a regulated marketplace for leisure hashish. The commonwealth legalized easy possession and residential cultivation in July, however leisure gross sales aren’t set to start till 2024 and legislators might want to vote once more this 12 months on authorizing a retail hashish market.
Del. Lee Ware (R-Powhatan) has superior a proposal to amend final 12 months’s legalization invoice to permit leisure gross sales “solely in localities which have permitted the operation of retail marijuana shops via a referendum.” Because the 2021 invoice stands, dispensaries could be allowed in all places by default – besides in localities that vote to opt-out of leisure gross sales by referendum. Ware’s invoice would flip that exception on its head.
Efforts to roll again elements of legalization are more likely to achieve assist from Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, who in a current interview mentioned “there’s a number of work to be carried out” on retail hashish legal guidelines and expressed concerns about social equity measures.
Nonetheless, Higgs Clever of Marijuana Justice mentioned she isn’t deterred by the GOP’s efforts and can maintain urgent legislators to make social fairness and legal justice reform a central a part of legalization.
“It’s heartbreaking, however it’s common for historical past to have a lot of these rollbacks once we’ve made a lot progress in the previous couple of years,” she mentioned.
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