Editorial: State’s cannabis board needs rural representation

King George County — east of Fredericksburg — has become the first locality in Virginia to signal that it will try to prevent a retail marijuana store from opening in the county once the state opens a retail weed market in 2024.

It will probably fail.

Here’s why we feel confident making that prediction: The new state law that legalizes marijuana in stages (personal possession OK come July 1, with a retail market coming later) creates a mechanism by which localities can block a retail pot store.

They have one chance and one chance only — to hold a referendum in November 2022.

If voters then vote in favor of prohibition, King George can keep the pot store out. That’s the only way.

If voters reject prohibition, or there’s no referendum, then a retail weed store is presumed legal — pending a business owner with a state-issued licenses and lots of other regulatory hurdles.

King George already has an Alcoholic Beverage Control store. Virginia’s new law caps the number of marijuana stores at 400 — about the same number as the 392 ABC stores we have.

That’s one reason to think King George will likely get a marijuana store.

If your locality has an ABC store, it will probably get a marijuana store, as well. Here’s a better reason: South Dakota last year voted 54% in favor of legalizing marijuana. South Dakota also voted 62% for Donald Trump.

If you assume that Democrats would readily vote for marijuana and the question is simply how many Republicans would vote in favor, then South Dakota becomes a useful measuring stick.

King George voted 59.4% for Trump which suggests that King George would vote in favor of marijuana with a few votes to spare. Indeed, some counties in South Dakota that voted as much as 72% for Trump also voted in favor of legal weed.

Lots of conservative localities in Virginia may feel an obligation to ask for a referendum but they shouldn’t be surprised if voters say “sure, why not?”

Indeed, South Dakota voters were being asked the threshold question of whether marijuana should be legal.

In Virginia, that question has already been answered by the legislature — the question now is simply which localities will turn away stores and the tax revenue that comes with them. These will essentially be liquor-by-the-drink referenda for the modern age (and over the past two decades virtually all over those have passed).

Where marijuana stores will go is an interesting question; they will be the most visible sign of Virginia’s legalization. But they are not the most important question — if by important you mean which localities will get the biggest slices of what’s estimated to be a $1.2 billion industry and perhaps 11,000 to 18,400 jobs.

Most of those jobs, and most of revenue, will go to the localities where marijuana is grown and processed — and Virginia’s law allows growing and processing anywhere, as long as there’s a state-issued license. That means a locality could vote to ban a retail store but couldn’t stop a marijuana-growing or processing operation, as long as it met the usual zoning conditions.

And that’s what brings us to our main topic today: All those licenses will get issued by a newly created board, the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority (the more scientific term cannabis is the preferred word in the industry, not the more popular name marijuana).

It will be that authority that writes many of the regulations that will govern how the state’s new cannabis market will work, from what security measures have to be in place to how stores can advertise to how to evaluate the controversial “social equity” provisions that give preference to applicants of certain backgrounds.

The governor’s office is now taking applications for those who want to serve on that five-member board — as well as the related 21-member Cannabis Public Health Advisory Council and the 20-member Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Board.

Here’s the marker we’d like to lay down: Two members of that five-member board should be from Southwest and Southside Virginia.

Here’s why: First, the law says “appointees shall reflect the racial, ethnic, gender and geographic diversity of the Commonwealth.” There is no geographic diversity without Southwest and Southside Virginia.

Now, here’s why we care so much: $$$. You’d think a farm product would naturally get grown in farm country. Not here. The trend is to grow marijuana indoors.

Marijuana Business Daily reports that California — which has the nation’s biggest marijuana market but also some of the most restrictive laws — more than 80% of the state’s pot supply comes from indoor operations.

With indoor operations, you can grow plants year-round. There’s also the security aspect.

Greg Habeeb, a former state delegate who represented Salem, now runs Gentry Locke Consulting in Richmond, which is advising prospective cannabis business owners. Here’s what he told us a few weeks ago: “It’s one thing if you’re in Mexico with a cartel guarding your field, but I don’t know how you provide security on a 50-acre marijuana field that will satisfy Virginia regulators who are familiar with the indoor requirements for marijuana.”

A quote that good deserves to get used a second time. It also makes the point: This new Virginia Cannabis Control Authority may well require indoor grows only — and that will inevitably tilt those operations, and their jobs, and their tax revenues, toward urban Virginia.

Rural localities who want to counteract that ought to be moving now to position themselves to get some of those new businesses. They can be identifying people in their community who qualify for special preference under the law’s social equity provisions (those with marijuana convictions and graduates of the state’s historically Black colleges, most notably). They can be holding seminars on how to start those businesses.

They can be consulting with their counterparts in other states that have legalized cannabis. You don’t have to approve of marijuana to approve of marijuana jobs.

We suspect that back in the day lots of non-smokers still approved of all the tobacco jobs in Danville.

But rural Virginia also needs representatives on the state’s governing board to make sure a fair share of those licenses get assigned here.

Lived in Virginia at least three years?

Got a bachelor’s degree in business “or a related field of study”?

Got seven years of experience “in the direct management, supervision, or control of a business or legal affairs”?

If so, you’re eligible. Apply here: https://solutions.virginia.gov/boardappointments.