CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – The legislation establishing and regulating a retail marijuana market in Virginia was among the bills the General Assembly returned to Gov. Abigail Spanberger in its original form, without the body accepting her proposed amendments.

That means the Governor can choose to sign the bill into law, veto it, or do nothing before the May 22 deadline, at which point it would become law.

Spanberger said she doesn’t want Virginia’s plan rolled out in a half-baked form. She wants to ensure regulators, law enforcement and shop owners have the time and framework in place for a successful launch. That’s something she said she was advised by governors and officials from other states that have already gone through the process.

“What are the lessons learned? What do they wish they had done better? What would they suggest to us?” Spanberger said. “Each and every one of them said some version of, ‘Make sure you get it right the first time. And don’t rush it.'”

Del. Katrina Callsen, who sits on the commission to establish Virginia’s retail marijuana market, called the legislation “needed.”

“It’s legal to possess marijuana but it’s not legal to purchase it,” Callsen told Cville Right Now. “And it has made it so we have a really unregulated retail market where we’re kind of trusting operators to be operating in good faith and reporting things and having safe products, but we don’t know if they are. So, it’s pretty imperative that we get an established safe regulated market.”

Spanberger had amended the bill to delay the beginning of the market from Jan. 1 to July 1., raise the tax on cannabis from 6 to 8%, drop the number of stores from 350 to 200, and criminalize smoking in public, punishable by a misdemeanor.

“From an implementation standpoint, my goal is to make sure that there’s great clarity both in implementation and in the ending retail market that we end up with,” Spanberger said. “So, delaying it by six months I think is necessary to do everything from promulgate all the regulations related to how do you get a license, how do you apply for a license, for transit, for growth, for retails sales, to making sure there is clarity for law enforcement. … A little bit more time to ensure we’re getting it right and not rushing it.”

The General Assembly returned the bill to the Governor in its original form, without her amendments.

Opponents of Spanberger’s proposed changes said they would have led to sky-high prices, with the cost for the license and the high tax ultimately being passed on to consumers.

“That’s going to crush people, the consumers,” Dawn Morris, owner of local smoke and pipe shop Higher Education, told Cville Right Now. “They’re going to be taxing these people who go to the license. Then they’re going to tax the end person too. This is really a huge whammy and it’s going to elevate the cost of cannabis exponentially.”

Del. Amy Laufer said she can’t predict what the Governor will ultimately do now that the bill has been returned to her in its original form.

“I think we have a new governor, and we have to give her the opportunity to weigh in on those issues,” Laufer told Cville Right Now. “Many of these issues we’ve been working on for a long time. But obviously it’s a new administration. She has until May 22. I guess we’ll find out then.”