Virginia business preps for recreational marijuana market launch in 2027

As Virginia prepares for the recreational marijuana market, which will launch on July 1, 2027, state agencies and marijuana retail businesses are preparing for the expected surge in demand.

Sunrise on The Hill went to Beyond/Hello’s Manassas cultivation facility and dispensary to learn how the preparations are already underway — though the market’s opening is still 10 months away.

During a tour with Trent Woloveck, the chief strategy director for Jushi Holdings, he discussed the process from plant to flower, necessary expansions, and expectations for the market.

It started off in the flower room, the “lifeblood of the facility,” Woloveck said, and continued to various rooms with climate controls.

Virginia lawmakers and Gov. Abigail Spanberger came to an agreement earlier this year to launch Virginia’s marijuana market. Their compromise set a start date of July 1, 2027.

“Quantity will be the massive difference,” Woloveck said.

Currently, according to the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority, nearly 115,000 patients purchased medical cannabis across the commonwealth in FY25. That’s just over 1% of the state’s population.

Woloveck projects a health retail market can support 8-12% of a state’s population.

“We expect that doesn’t just happen overnight,” he said. “We also need to be able to produce the supply to meet that demand… [the biggest challenge] is all coming down to space. This is an agricultural crop.”

But producing supply only works if there’s demand, and one of the state’s goals is to increase that demand by convincing people to stop buying weed illegally and instead purchase from a regulated business.

Woloveck said changing people’s buying habits starts with “a good, standardized, independently third-party tested product,” like that at Beyond/Hello.

That message is echoed by Jamie Patten, the chief administrative officer and acting head of the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority (CCA), which will oversee the retail marijuana program.

“It’s a safer product,” she said. “It’s been tested, we know where it’s been… You just don’t know if you’re buying illicit product, what’s in it, and whether it’s contaminated.”

Patten said her team is “excited” and “ready to go.” One of its first tasks is hiring. Patten told Sunrise on The Hill the CCA is roughly quadrupling their staff so it can handle retail applications, inspections, enforcement, and education.