Stores offering cannabis are proliferating in S.W.Va., almost a year after a series of raids across the region

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Within 11 blocks on State Street in downtown Bristol — the main street in the city where Virginia meets Tennessee — five cannabis-related stores are operating, and business appears to be brisk.

The same is true for stores across a swath of Southwest Virginia, including Washington County, Marion and Blacksburg, 10 months after police raided stores across nine Southwest Virginia counties and seized cash, guns and marijuana. Several stores shut down, but many remain open — and others, like several in Bristol, have opened, apparently undaunted by the law enforcement scrutiny.

And while many of the shops once billed themselves as “adult share” businesses , where customers bought a hat or sticker and were “gifted” a baggie of marijuana, some of them are now branding themselves as “private clubs” and are simply selling to so-called members.

[Read more: Columnist Dwayne Yancey made purchases at “private clubs” in Marion and Abingdon. We sent the samples to a lab — and they all tested well over the legal limit for THC. ]

In addition to the stores on State Street in Bristol, there are at least four other stores in Bristol, two on Commonwealth Avenue and two in a shopping center in the Exit 7 area.

Bristol Police Detective Lt. Steve Crawford said this week it seems like the stores opened overnight. He admits that Virginia’s cannabis law — which allows adult personal possession of a small amount and use at home, but doesn’t establish a legal retail market — has created gray areas and confusion for law enforcement.

But he said that local police will be paying more attention to the shops because they’re starting to draw complaints about thefts, assaults and other crime in and around the locations.

Virginia Freedom of Information Act requests filed for reports of police calls to the cannabis shops in Bristol between July 1, 2023, and July 24, 2024, found only a few minor issues like thefts and intoxication at those addresses.

Crawford said the crimes sometimes happen outside in parking lots or in the street near the stores, so that type of search might not reveal all the issues.

He added that he’s not sure why Bristol has so many of the stores. But he agreed that the location of at least five on State Street could be related to the proximity to Tennessee, where cannabis possession, use and sales are illegal.

City Manager Randy Eads did not respond to a request for comment on the city’s cannabis-related stores.

Because the products sold, which often include edibles like gummies and cookies, are unregulated, untaxed and untested, Crawford said people need to be careful about what they consume or smoke.

“You just don’t really know what you’re getting,” he said.

In neighboring Washington County, a couple of the stores closed following the searches, but at least two remain, including one of the region’s largest, the Zarati Shop, located just south of Abingdon on Lee Highway.

FOIA requests for law enforcement calls to the Washington County stores between July 2023 and July 2024 show more than 20 calls involving the Zarati Shop, with complaints ranging from noise reports to theft of a gun, an aggressive customer, a customer report of an allergic reaction, an intoxicated driver and loose pigs.

Based on visits made over the last two weeks in places including Bristol, Abingdon, Marion, Wytheville, Radford and Blacksburg, a number of stores appear to be operating as private clubs. At some, customers are handed a membership card, or their first name is recorded on a computer or scribbled in a notebook. The clerk then points to a board displaying the names of the products and their prices. There is no gift or share with purchase; instead, the transaction appears to be a simple sale.

Most of the stores are staffed by clerks. Attempts to reach the owners of a number of the stores around the region have been unsuccessful. In several cases, they did not respond to messages sent through Facebook or left for them at their stores. In another instance, an employee hung up when a reporter asked to speak to the owner. Some of the stores appear to have the same owners, while ownership of others is unclear.

The searches and seizures made by police last fall seem to have had little effect on the stores. On Sept. 28, two dozen search warrants were executed at stores, homes and financial institutions across Southwest Virginia. In addition to 29 local law enforcement agencies and county prosecutors, the operation involved the Virginia State Police, the state attorney general’s office, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

The operation was described in a state police news release as an “extensive, ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of money laundering and illegal narcotic distribution network by retail establishments.”

Corinne Geller, public relations director for the Virginia State Police, said there is nothing new to report, though she said it remains an active investigation.

The only known charges related to the searches to date were filed April 4 by the Scott County Sheriff’s Office , which charged 13 people with distribution, intent to distribute and conspiracy to distribute.

Search warrants unsealed this spring in Washington County allege that some of the cannabis-related stores that were targeted were involved in money laundering. Search warrants from Lee, Pulaski and Scott counties revealed weeks of undercover buys by police at stores there and the seizure of ATMs, thousands of dollars in cash, plant materials, computers and cellphones.

The search warrants in the other counties remain sealed, according to court officials.

The police operation did not involve Bristol. Crawford said the city police department did not get in on the early planning of the raids and said both the local department and the state police need to communicate better so they can work together in the future.

A spokesperson for the office of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said he couldn’t comment on the investigation because it is ongoing.

In April 2023, Miyares issued an opinion that the gifting of marijuana contingent upon the purchase of another item is illegal. That opinion also says that neither an establishment’s status as a private club nor the source of its marijuana is material to whether it or the customers are distributing marijuana unlawfully.

Most of the stores, sometimes called pop-up shops, have opened since 2021, when the state legalized personal possession of cannabis but didn’t create a legal retail market. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said he wants nothing to do with a retail market and in March he vetoed a bipartisan effort to create a legal adult-use cannabis market in Virginia by next year.

“So, when the governor vetoed this bill, we said it will lead to an explosion in the black market of illegal marijuana and other cannabis products,” said Greg Habeeb, a former Republican state delegate from Salem, president of Richmond-based Gentry Locke Consulting and representative of the Virginia Cannabis Association. “We knew it was going to happen. We told you it was going to happen and it’s exactly what’s happened.”

The problem is that the state has a system where marijuana and other cannabis products can be grown, shared, consumed and possessed legally, but there’s no legal market for selling it, which makes enforcement almost impossible, he added.

Even if police tried to enforce the law, they’d have to set up sting operations and test the products. But if they shut down one store, five more would replace it, according to Habeeb.

He said the only answer is to legalize a retail market for marijuana.

“You can only stop the stores by eliminating their demand,” he said. “The only way you’d eliminate their demand is by creating a legal supply.”

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