Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly have passed legislation to legalize the retail sale and purchase of recreational cannabis across the Commonwealth beginning January 1, 2027. Under the Democrats’ legislation, individual localities will have no power to opt out of the legalized drug market or prohibit state-sanctioned retail cannabis transactions within their jurisdictions. Democrat Governor Spanberger has made clear that she supports legalization, and she is expected to sign the legislation.
While the rest of the Democrats’ legislative record offers stiff competition, a strong case can be made that this legalization is the worst legislation they passed in the current General Assembly.
The medical evidence against legalization is indisputable. As cannabis has become more widely available and legalization has made it more acceptable, more people are using it, especially young people. As they do so, they become sicker and dumber as a result.
A study presented to the American College of Cardiology in 2025 found that cannabis users younger than 50 are six times more likely to suffer a heart attack than nonusers, and four times more likely to suffer strokes.
THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis that causes people to feel “high,” is much more highly concentrated and potent than it was when the boomers were toking in the 1960’s. The higher potency of today’s THC is producing high rates of dependency. Approximately one in ten cannabis users becomes addicted, and one in six becomes addicted if they start as teenagers.
Today’s potent THC severely degrades a wide range of brain functions, including decision-making, coordination, memory and emotional control. Younger brains are especially vulnerable. In February of this year, the American Medical Association published a study finding that teenagers using cannabis faced a significantly increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders, especially psychotic and bipolar disorders.
Other problems seen following legalization and increased use of cannabis include sharply increased emergency room visits for cannabis-related issues, a rise in motor vehicle fatalities where drivers tested positive for THC, and a growing negative impact on workers’ cognitive skills and motivation that is adversely affecting job performance and workplace safety.
Virginia Democrats and cannabis industry lobbyists claim that the coming legalization will bring the previously illicit cannabis market out of the shadows, where it can be regulated to ensure responsible use only by adults, and it can be taxed to help support worthy public programs. Such claims should not be taken seriously.
For one thing, they ignore the overwhelming evidence of the enormous harm that has been done to public health, safety, and the economy when cannabis has been legalized and regulated.
Such claims also ignore the clear historical evidence that restrictive regulation of access to potentially addictive products, such as alcohol and tobacco, doesn’t ensure responsible use only by those permitted to access the regulated market. In practice, regulation and taxation strongly support demand in the black market for cheaper and more readily available alternatives. And young people will always be motivated in some numbers to circumvent the restricted market to engage in normalized “adult” behavior.
Why, then, have Democrats passed this legislation in the face of overwhelming evidence that legalization will bring enormous harm to the Commonwealth? It is, quite simply, because the Democrat business model is based on expanding the dependency and degrading the agency of the citizens they govern.
Our country was founded 250 years ago on the history-changing proposition that every one of us shares a precious, sacred humanity, and that the only legitimizing purpose of government is to enact laws that respect that humanity by helping responsible self-governing citizens pursue the full potential of that humanity.
From their first emergence at the turn of the 20th century, progressive Democrats have been ambivalent, and often hostile, about the founding principles of our nation. Woodrow Wilson said that the Declaration of Independence has nothing to teach us, and that we rely too much on democracy based on popular sovereignty.
Progressives have worked tirelessly to replace the principles and institutions of our founding with an anti-democratic technocracy governed by unaccountable credentialed experts empowered to manage the affairs of a disenfranchised dependent populace.
The progressive dependence agenda takes many forms: debilitating welfare programs that undermine the family and destroy the work ethic; schooling defined by indoctrination and “equitable” grading that make a mockery of education and spread only misinformation and ignorance; and the legalization of drugs that destroy families, careers, and one’s sense of personal agency.
Virginia Democrats should be ashamed that they have seriously endangered the health and welfare of their fellow citizens by facilitating the distribution and normalizing the consumption of a potent, addictive, destructive intoxicant.
Virginia voters who failed to appreciate the threat posed by Democrats will now pay the price, at least for a while. But voters elsewhere, in the midterms, can and should heed the warning raised by the legalization of cannabis in the Commonwealth – this is what you get from Democrats.
J. Kennerly Davis served as Deputy Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Virginia.