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Virginia Lawmakers Advance Marijuana Resentencing Bills As Push To Legalize Commercial Sales Also Nears Finish Line

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3 weeks ago

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Virginia’s House and Senate lawmakers have advanced a pair of bills with amendments that would allow people with prior marijuana convictions to be sentenced.

Members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees on Monday approved alternate versions of the reform bill in opposite chambers, setting the stage for bicameral negotiations as the measures move through the legislative process.

Broadly, the legislation introduced in both chambers would create a process to consider changing the sentences for people incarcerated or on community supervision for certain crimes involving the possession, manufacture, sale or distribution of marijuana.

The Senate panel approved it HB 26 In a 9-6 vote by Del. Rozia Henson (D), with revisions largely consistent with the House bill, SB 62that is being backed by Senate President Pro Tem Louise Lucas (D). passed on the floor last month before going Home.

Senators have now referred the House measure to the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee for further consideration.

There are some differences between the sizes of the chambers. The House-passed legislation includes minors who would be eligible for relief from marijuana-related convictions, clarifies that judges would only consider convictions for cannabis offenses and specifies that the reform would include people with marijuana-related probation violations.

Both proposed bills apply to people with convictions or convictions for conduct that occurred before July 1, 2021, when a state law legalizing personal possession and home cultivation of marijuana went into effect.




As for the Senate bill, which clean up The House committee’s 15-7 vote Monday would have eliminated more categories of people who could be eligible for the sentence as an alternative, and would add a longer list of violent crimes that make people with cannabis convictions ineligible for relief.

Against the background of these recent developments, Virginia bills to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana have moved forward in the way of implementing laws. Last week, members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate modified and advanced the proposals of the opposite chambers on the subject.

Members of the Virginia Legislature Last month, he took action on multiple marijuana bills during a major deadline—advance proposals to legalize the sale of cannabis, provide a way to punish previous marijuana convictions, as well as other laws to allow access to medical cannabis for seriously ill patients in hospitals.

Despite their stark differences, the two chambers’ trade sales bills have largely aligned with recommendations released by the legislature in December. Joint Committee to Oversee the Transition to the Commonwealth Retail Cannabis Market.

Meanwhile, some members of the GOP have aligned ideologically with their Democratic colleagues throughout this legislative process, breaking with the majority of their caucus. in favor of creating a regulated market for adults to buy cannabis.

Since legalizing cannabis ownership and home cultivation in 2021, Virginia lawmakers have been working to establish a commercial marijuana market– Only for those efforts to stall under former Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who twice vetoed measures sent to his desk by the Legislature.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D), on the other hand, supports legalizing the sale of marijuana to adults.

Separately last month, the Virginia House patients passed a bill to allow the use of medical marijuana in hospitals. It would require health care facilities to implement policies “to address the situation in which an eligible patient is authorized to use medical cannabis.”

The Senate passed various pieces of legislation use of medical cannabis in healthcare facilities last month

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Meanwhile, the Virginia House passed the bill earlier this month Protecting the rights of parents who use marijuana by complying with state laws.

Del. According to the proposal by Nadarius Clark (D), a parent or guardian’s own use of cannabis “shall not serve as a basis for a finding of abuse or neglect of a child unless other facts establish that its possession or consumption causes or produces physical or mental injury to the child.”

“A person’s legal possession or consumption of substances permitted (under state marijuana law) shall not serve as a basis for limiting custody or visitation unless other facts establish that such possession or consumption is not in the best interest of the child,” reads the text of HB 942.

Separately, the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry has published a new defining workplace protections for cannabis users.

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Demand for medical cannabis continues to grow

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6 hours ago

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March 22, 2026

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West Virginians’ demand for medical cannabis continues to grow

Meanwhile, the national conversation reveals an ongoing debate about the value of cannabis, with a new presidential executive order and a New York Times editorial pointing in opposite directions. A WVU Medicine addiction specialist shared some resources on the issues behind that conversation.

In Morgantown, a new medical cannabis dispensary recently opened at Earl Core and Hartman Run roads: Country Grown Cannabis. That brought the dispensary count in Morgantown to eight, with three in Westover, Kingwood, Fairmont and one in White Hall.

And for West Virginia, most data provided by the state’s Office of Medical Cannabis have admitted 35,202 patients in December 2025: a slight decrease from October 2025, when the number was 35,598; but higher than the 34,003 in our previous report in September 2024.

Sales revenue varies from month to month, according to the Transparency Project – a national data source used by the OMC. As of August 2024, revenue was $8.39 billion. Most recently, in October 2025, it was $8.09 million; and in December, 7.97 million dollars.

Read more at Dominion Position










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Missouri Court Orders Officials To Award Marijuana Business Licenses Amid Application Scoring Flaws

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6 hours ago

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March 22, 2026

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“The department’s scoring criteria and scorers’ decisions were based on the subjective ratings of the scorers. This fundamental flaw tainted the entire scoring process.”

By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent

A Missouri appeals court has issued a sweeping rebuke of the state’s marijuana licensing process, ordering regulators to issue Hippos LLC licenses to 13 facilities after 2019 scoring was inconsistent and, in one case, after a grader had never established the ratings.

A unanimous verdict is issued after a few weeks A rigorous state audit found the same errors-irregular scoring, poor documentation and a process so opaque that the integrity of the results was in doubt.

Last week’s decision by the Missouri Southern District Court of Appeals does more than revive Hippos’ longstanding challenge over denied cultivation, manufacturing and dispensary licenses. It also undercuts the methodology Missouri’s Administrative Hearing Board has used to resolve cannabis licensing disputes and raises new questions about hundreds of potential rulings in nearly 850 appeals filed by unsuccessful applicants.

Lisa Cox, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which oversees the cannabis program, told The Independent that the agency is “evaluating all options” in terms of appealing the decision.

Hippos officials could not be reached for comment.

As the Missouri Department of Health and Aging Services worked to build the state’s multibillion-dollar industry framework in 2019, it hired Nevada-based Wise Health Solutions to source nearly 2,000 applications.

“In each of Hippo’s applications, the same answers to the same question received consistent scores in many cases,” Judge Jeffrey Bates wrote in the ruling. “This should never have happened if Wise’s scorers had followed the instructions given. Neither the department nor Wise did anything to correct this situation.”

The Hippos lawsuit challenged requests for denials of two cultivation, six manufacturing and five dispensary licenses.

The first stop to appeal the denied applications was with the Administrative Hearing Board, which tried to recover Hippos’ applications by choosing the most common score for the questions the company challenged.

The three appeals judges found the commission’s approach to reinstatement “completely flawed”.

“The raw scores do not provide evidence of the intent of the scorers, as there is no note explaining why the scores were given,” the ruling said. “The conflict of these unexplained scores cannot be reconciled by assuming that the most common score for a given answer is correct.”

The justices agreed with Hippos that the commission’s decisions affirming the state’s denial of the company’s requests were “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable” and that those decisions were not supported by competent and substantial evidence at all.

The case was remanded to the circuit court, with the lower court ordering the department to “grant Hippos the requested cultivation, manufacturing and dispensary facility licenses.”

No rejection

A major blow to the state’s defense, the judges said, was that Hippos provided two credible witnesses who testified that the petition should have received higher scores, and the judges believed the state did not back down.

The experts were cannabis consultants who collectively prepared 83 applications in Missouri, the ruling says, and more than half of their clients’ applications successfully received licenses.

“The Department offered no rebuttal to Hippos’ expert testimony and presented no other testimony as to why Hippos should not have been given the higher score that the experts testified to,” the ruling states.

In its response to State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick’s report released last month by the department, it argued that the board had conducted a “thorough review” of the scoring evidence and heard from many experts on hundreds of appeals.

Cox said the Hippos case was one of the first the commission heard in the process of reviewing the department’s licensing decisions.

“The information the Southern District is seeking – expert testimony supporting the department’s position – has been provided in all of the following cases and supports the Administrative Hearing Board’s decision in the Hippos case,” he said in an email to The Independent.

The department’s audit response listed several cases in which the commission ruled in favor of the department, and in at least one other case, the commission used the same methodology that an appeals court last week called “flawed.”

No notes, no evidence

Hippos challenged the scores given to various questions in the application.

The judge had a hard time justifying the scores without seeing the grader’s notes on why they made them.

“After concluding that it was necessary to re-score Hippos’ applications due to the inconsistencies noted by the commission, the commission stated that it was looking for ‘evidence’ that reflected the subjective evaluation of the scorers,” the ruling stated. “Obviously, any notes on a scorer’s reasons for giving a particular score would be helpful to demonstrate consistency.”

Without notice, the ruling said the board’s decision to use the old sheet music was “inventive.”

The lack of notice comes from an instruction in Wise’s training manual, the ruling said, pointing to the lines: “Don’t write anything you don’t want everyone to read. Past versions (something deleted) can be found(.) Adhere to this axiom: Say and forget; write and regret.”

The handbook reminded them that e-mails, memos, or other written materials could be discovered if any scores were challenged in court.

During the audit, Fitzpatrick also said those sentences and the lack of note-taking were problematic. In response to the audit, the department said reading the sentences on its own “does not consider that language in the context of the rest of the training manual,” and raters were encouraged to take notes.

In the lawsuit, Hippos also successfully challenged the scorer’s credentials, something they had tried and failed to do before the commission in other cases.

The ruling stated that Wise was required to ensure that each scorer had the experience and background to perform their assigned role. In the case of the woman who got the grades Hippos challenged, “there is nothing in the record to show that that requirement was met.” The woman did not list or describe any experience or background in the cannabis industry or business evaluation or analysis, the ruling said.

However, the department has argued that he is a university professor with good research skills in the entire case. In a 2024 brief, the department noted that it also graded three other questions about Hippos applications.

“However, Hippos does not criticize the scoring of these questions,” he said short the states “Because they gave each of them a score of 10.”

The appeals court was not convinced.

Unanimous court the verdictAlong with Fitzpatrick’s audit is a sweeping assessment of how Missouri has issued licenses that launched its legal marijuana market. It also raises broader questions about other cases in which the Administrative Hearing Board has relied on similar methods to review disputed application scores.

“The board correctly concluded that the department’s scoring criteria and scorers’ decisions were based on the subjective assessments of the scorers,” the ruling states. “This fundamental error tainted the entire scoring process.”

This story was first published by the Missouri Independent.

Photo elements courtesy of the user rawpixel and Philip Steffan.

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Sulfur’s key role in plant nutrition

Published

1 day ago

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March 21, 2026

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Sulfur plays a crucial role in plant nutrition from a biochemical point of view, especially in the synthesis of amino acids and proteins. “In fact, it is a key element in the synthesis of basic compounds such as methionine, cysteine ​​and glutathione,” Afepasa explained.

“Methionine serves as a precursor to several molecules that are essential in plant growth and stress regulation. Cysteine ​​provides structural support for proteins and contributes to the antioxidant defense of plants. Glutathione, one of the most powerful antioxidants, participates in detoxification and protects cells from oxidative damage, in favor of general metabolic stability.”

© Afepasa

In terms of availability, different forms of sulfur behave differently in the soil. “Elemental sulfur acts as a medium and long-term reserve, as it must first be converted into sulfates by microbial activity before being absorbed by plants. This conversion process makes the supply slower and more permanent. On the other hand, sulfates can be used immediately by plants, they offer a quick response but are more prone to leaching losses, especially in light soil or intensive irrigation.” Afepasa’s technological innovation helps to overcome these traditional limitations.

Technologies such as Sultech improve sulfur efficiency through orthorhombic crystallography and smaller particle size, increasing reactivity and rapid soil transformation. This ensures a faster availability of nutrients with immediate and lasting effects.

© Afepasa

Sulfur as a biostimulant
In addition to its nutritional role, sulfur functions as a biostimulant. “Its presence improves the microbiological activity of the soil, especially the microorganisms that convert nutrients into a form available to plants. At the same time, by contributing to the synthesis of compounds such as glutathione, it helps strengthen plant defenses and increases tolerance to abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity or extreme temperatures.”

“The effect of sulfur also affects how other nutrients behave in the soil. Its interaction with nitrogen improves nitrogen uptake, especially in high-demand crops, thereby maximizing the efficiency of nitrogen fertilization. Sulfur also helps dissolve phosphorus and micronutrients that may be locked in the soil, making them more accessible to plant roots.”

© Afepasa

Improvement of the physico-chemical properties of the soil
Finally, regarding the improvement of the soil, Afepasa emphasized that formulations based on sulfur are essential to solve physical-chemical imbalances. “Products developed with our advanced Sultech technology can displace salts in saline-sodic soils, reducing electrical conductivity and creating a more suitable environment for root growth. They are also effective in correcting the alkaline pH of the wet bulb, helping to restore optimal conditions for nutrient absorption.”

© AfepasaFor more information:
Afepasa
Ignasi Casajuana Reyes
Area Manager Latam and responsible for digital marketing
Email: (email protected)
https://afepasa.com/

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