Marijuana; legalization of cultivation, manufacture, sale, possession, and testing; penalties. Establishes a regulatory scheme for the regulation of marijuana cultivation facilities, marijuana manufacturing facilities, marijuana testing facilities, and retail marijuana stores by the Board of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The bill also grants localities the authority to enact ordinances establishing additional licensing requirements for marijuana establishments located within such locality and allows the home cultivation of marijuana for personal use under certain circumstances. The bill imposes a tax on retail marijuana and retail marijuana products sold by a retail marijuana store at a rate of 9.7 percent (for a total sales tax of 15 percent) and provides that 67 percent of the revenues collected from the tax be deposited into the general fund and 33 percent of the revenues be deposited into a "Retail Marijuana Education Support Fund" to be used solely for purposes of public education. Finally, the bill establishes several new criminal penalties related to marijuana, as well as modifies some existing criminal penalties. This bill was incorporated into HB 2312.
Sponsored bills
Celebrating the life of the Honorable MamyeE. BaCote.
Celebrating the life of the Honorable AugustusBenton Chafin, Jr.
Campaign finance; prohibited contributions tocandidates. Prohibits candidates, campaign committees, and politicalcommittees from soliciting or accepting contributions from any publicutility, as defined in the bill, and prohibits any public utility or any political committee established by such public utility frommaking any such contribution.
General Assembly meetings; streaming and recording. Requires the Clerk of the House of Delegates and the Clerk of theSenate to ensure that every (i) subcommittee or committee meetingof a standing committee of the General Assembly, regardless of meetingdate, and (ii) floor session of the House of Delegates or the Senate,including any joint session of the houses, is streamed with closedcaptioning, recorded and archived. The bill defines "stream" and specifiesthat a qualifying meeting is one the date and time of which havebeen scheduled on a public website of any agency of the General Assemblyfor at least one hour prior to the meeting and that takes place inthe State Capitol, the Pocahontas Building, or the General AssemblyBuilding in Richmond. The bill has a delayed effective date of October1, 2020.
Admission to bail; presumption of release on recognizance. Provides that a judicial officer shall release any person taken into custody by an arresting officer for any misdemeanor violation committed in such arresting officer's presence, except for violations of driving or operating a motor vehicle, watercraft, or motorboat while intoxicated, offenses that give rise to a rebuttable presumption against bail, or as otherwise provided in Title 46.2 (Motor Vehicles).
Transit funding. Raises the existing regional transportation fee, a grantor's tax, from $0.15 per $100 to $0.20 per $100 for localities in the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority that are also members of the Northern Virginia Transportation District. The bill requires half of the revenues to be deposited in the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority Fund and half to be deposited in the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Capital Fund. The rate of tax in the other localities will remain at $0.15 per $100, with one-third of the revenues to be retained by the locality to be used for transportation purposes and the other two-thirds to be deposited in the Northern Virginia Transportation District Fund. The bill also raises the existing transient occupancy tax in the localities located in the Northern Virginia Transportation District from $2 to $3, with all of the revenues from the tax being used to support WMATA. This bill incorporates HB 977.
Prescription drug price transparency. Requiresevery health carrier, pharmacy benefits manager, wholesale drug distributer, and drug manufacturer to report information about prescription drugprices and related information to the Department of Health and requiresthe Department to make such information available on its website.
Safe destruction of records containing personalidentifying information. Requires a commercial entity that isin possession of, or has within its custody or control, records that(i) contain consumers' unencrypted, unredacted personal identifyinginformation and (ii) are no longer needed by the commercial entityto take reasonable steps to destroy, or arrange for the destructionof, the records by shredding, erasing, or otherwise destroying or modifying the personal identifying information in the records tomake it unreadable or indecipherable. The measure does not applyto certain financial institutions, health insurance or health carefacilities, consumer reporting agencies, or governmental entities.The measure authorizes a consumer who incurs actual damages due toa reckless or intentional violation of these requirements by a commercialentity to bring a civil action.
DCJS; costs and benefits of implementing a deflection to treatment program; report. Directs the Department of Criminal Justice Services to evaluate the costs and benefits of implementing a deflection to treatment program for individuals with substance use disorder or mental illness generally, and the Five Deflection Pathways in accordance with the Police, Treatment and Community Collaborative specifically, and to report its findings and recommendations to the Governor and the General Assembly by December 1, 2020.