When Virginia starts its legal marijuana market next July, a number of state criminal laws will change, and local Commonwealth's Attorneys are reviewing the law ahead of those changes.
Hanover County Commonwealth's Attorney Mackenzie Babichenko is worried about losing a tool she said was key to public safety: mandatory minimum sentences.
“Statistically, the same small group of people seem to be committing crime," Babichenko told Radio IQ. "That same person is not able to do it if they are separated from the rest of the community.”
Norfolk CA Ramin Fatehi disagrees. He argues mandatory minimums haven’t led to crime reductions, and he expects a legal market may actually reduce crime.
“This is a violence reduction measure. It's an equity measure. It’s a tax generating measure," Fatehi said. "It is an unqualified good that the General Assembly and governor were able to give us this legal market.”
One thing the two agree on? The legislature isn’t doing enough to fund their prosecutorial work more broadly, but in the context of weed market enforcement they diverge.
Babichenko said when other states created legal markets, they gave more resources to local enforcers to address illicit markets versus the legal ones, but Virginia lawmakers did not.
“It’s going to require more resources for us now to determine the difference between the two of those things,” the Hanover Republican said.
But Fatehi said legalization may actually lighten their workload.
“Nobody in Virginia is killing each other over moonshine like they did in the 1930s," the Norfolk Democrat said. "Once we have a legal marijuana market, I expect marijuana deal-related violence to decline.”
University of Mary Washington Political Science Professor Emeritus Stephen Farnsworth says Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorneys are political positions and concerns over legalization through a political lens aren’t a surprise.
“The political disputes over this transition period and how to litigate challenges remain,” he told Radio IQ.
Questions about how to enforce the future legal market come after a handful of former Republican elected officials raised concerns about specifics in the bill's language, passed as part of the budget late last month.
"Prosecutors are warning the law banning marijuana distribution, and the law protecting Virginians under 21 from possessing marijuana, may have already been repealed a full year earlier than anyone intended," said Republican former Attorney General Jason Miyares on social media.
In an interview in her district earlier this week, Petersburg's Democratic Senator Lashrecse Aird called the accusation "unequivocally," false.
In a joint statement, Aird and Fairfax Democratic Delegate Paul Krizek, the authors of the marijuana market bill, said protections for youth were baked into the measure.
“Those protections were deliberately designed to reduce youth access, protect consumers and provide strong oversight of our marketplace,” Krizek said.
The Virginia Association of Commonwealth's Attorneys said in a statement they were satisfied with the final version of the code in question.
"It is clear confusion with the original language existed, with the concern then appropriately shared," VACA spokesperson Amanda Howie told Radio IQ.
Farnsworth, meanwhile, doesn't expect the fight over legal weed in Virginia to end.
"Virginia Republicans are casting about for issues that will generate more enthusiasm for the party than what was demonstrated during the last election cycle," he told Radio IQ. Republicans lost all statewide offices — including Miyares' AG post — and more than a dozen seats in the legislature during the 2025 election. "Weed legalization may create an environment for a backlash that will create new opportunities for them to make their case to Virginia voters."
