Virginia’s Republican-controlled House of Delegates has consistently killed Senate-passed marijuana reform bills this session, and the latest legislation to be stopped in its tracks is a modest proposal to let medical cannabis businesses make certain state-level tax deductions.
A House Finance subcommittee on Friday rejected the Senate-approved proposal to give the cannabis industry tax relief that they’re barred from receiving at the federal level under the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code known as 280E.
This comes days after the chamber separately killed a measure to start adult-use marijuana sales, as well as legislation to create a psilocybin advisory board while rescheduling the psychedelic.
While advocates weren’t necessarily surprised to see Republican lawmakers quash the sales and psychedelic proposals given its record and political makeup, the fact that the House panel voted to lay on the table the 280E relief measure in a 4-2 vote underscored the seemingly intractable challenges for reform in the chamber, even for a typically GOP-supported concept like tax relief.
It likely didn’t help that a representative from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) administration testified against the proposal.
As the chair of the Finance subcommittee pointed out during Friday’s hearing, a House companion of the cannabis tax measure
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