Virginia Lawmakers Reject Spanberger’s Changes
04/23/26
In a surprisingly swift rebuke of Governor Abigail Spanberger, the Virginia General Assembly announced yesterday their rejection of her proposed changes to SB 542, the bill to create the legal framework for the adult-use program.
The Senate voted 21-18 to reject her changes and the House rejected even taking up consideration of these changes. So all those old updates about what could happen with the bill and a delayed start to the program? Forget about them. The original language of SB 542 stands.
Spanberger now has three options:
Sign the original bill
Veto the bill in its entirety
Let the bill become law without her signature
She has until May 25th to decide on this.
From a purely statistical perspective, 67% of the options we now face are SB 542 becoming law. However, we are confident the odds are even higher given Spanberger’s longtime commitment to bringing adult-use cannabis to the state and vetoing a measure such as this would likely pose incredibly high political risks for Spanberger.
Fingers crossed we don’t have to wait until May 25th though for additional updates!