WTDW Podcast | Episode 54: What To Do When… You Want To Share Your Own Weed.

Will Knows Weed, Weed, Sharing Weed, Marijuana, Sharing Marijuana in Virginia, Legal Marijuana in Virginia.

What To Do When… You Want to Share Your Own Weed.

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The objective of the What To Do When… podcast is to discuss common legal scenarios faced by everyday citizens in Virginia. Critzer and Cardani practice law throughout Virginia and focus their practice around the state’s capital of Richmond, in the Piedmont region. Tune in and subscribe to learn about legal topics such as reckless driving by speeding, bad lawyers, Will Knows Weed, juvenile defense, juvenile sex crimes, reckless driving, the legalization of marijuana in Virginia, divorce 101, Child Support, and others.

WTDW Podcast | Episode 54: What To Do When… You Want To Share Your Own Weed.

What To Do When… Intro 00:01
Welcome to What To Do When… A podcast from real lawyers with real perspective, where we explore a variety of legal issues and scenarios. Each week we focus on a new topic and discuss what to do when and if any of these legal scenarios ever happened to you or a loved one. With over 40 years of combined legal experience, our hosts offer their unique perspectives and insights on a range of real life legal situations.

Scott Cardani 0:26

Welcome back again to What To Do When… A Dummies Guide to the Legal Verse. We’re here with Will today we’re Cardani Critzer Cardani in Richmond, Virginia. Well, what’s on the docket for today?

Will Smith III 0:40
What To Do When… You Want to Share Weed Legally.

Scott Cardani 0:43
Oh, wow. So last time we were here together, we were talking a little bit about sharing, I mean, about growing. So now we’re in the next phase of sharing. So what do you mean by that? What’s sharing mean? We’re allowed to share?

Will Smith III 0:54
Yeah, so just to go back just a bit, as far as growing is concerned, we know that you can grow up to four plants legally in Virginia.

Scott Cardani 1:01
Yep.

Will Smith III 1:01
Need to have them tagged with your personal information used for personal use, and that they can’t be visible to the public.

Scott Cardani 1:09
Still makes me laugh.

Will Smith III 1:10
That will be what we’re trying to go over today is you know, how to, you know, grow, and then also be able to share. And so well, and then also on top of that, how to be able to acquire it legally from somebody who’s growing it legally.

Scott Cardani 1:25
Okay, so this is a shout out for my son, Caleb. So we’re going to do this. So Caleb being 19, can he share? Or can he get it from somebody?

Will Smith III 1:33
Answer’s no to both of those.

Scott Cardani 1:34
Okay, that’s what I thought.

Will Smith III 1:35
So, just to be clear in Virginia, is just like alcohol that, you know, you have to be age 21 or older in order to legally possess or use marijuana.

Scott Cardani 1:43
Okay. And people realize this, a lot of people don’t understand this. Possession can also be determined by being in your system. It doesn’t have to be that you’re holding a joint or holding a bottle of beer. And I’ve had so many cases over the years like that possession is you consumed it and they can prove that you consumed it, you’re in possession, your body is in possession of it. I don’t wanna go down that road, but something to think about.

Will Smith III 2:05
Topic for another for another day. Yeah. But as far as you know, what the thing that we see right now, and there have been some articles they’ve been written recently, Richmond Times Dispatch and some other places that discuss how some of these, I guess you can say businesses, they’re underground businesses, in a way, are operating illegally. But people that are purchasing from them think that what they’re doing is perfectly fine. And so…

Scott Cardani 2:30
Yeah let’s talk about that for a minute. So what do you mean, so a perfect

Will Smith III 2:32
example of that is there are different sites or different places on social media, where you can reach out to them, and you know, they’ll send you their, their menu of everything that they have available. But what you’re doing is actually purchasing a piece of art, you’re purchasing some stickers, you’re purchasing some baked goods, and then they are giving this to them giving whatever they picked out as their gift. So they’re gifting them to marijuana. So this is a model that was very popular in DC when they first started with their legal recreational use. But still here in the state of Virginia, it’s still illegal for there to be any exchange of money, and then exchange of money for marijuana.

Scott Cardani 3:15
OK, so they kind of wrote the statute in such a way to anticipate that the very thing.

Will Smith III 3:20
Looking at other states, it looks like, you know, the whole purpose behind the legislation was to make sure that people weren’t finding little loopholes to get around it. So that’s the main thing that I think that people need to be aware of when they’re going through some of those websites.

Scott Cardani 3:34
So if you’re buying jelly doughnuts from Sammy down the street, and you’re getting a bonus of two liter, two ounces of marijuana, probably not legal in Virginia for either side. That’s correct.

Will Smith III 3:45
That’s right. So it can’t be as part of another transaction exchange can’t be part of a transaction.

Scott Cardani 3:52
What’s very important people, a lot of people don’t get distinctions and stuff like this sometimes, you know, we think, Well, I just bought the doughnuts. They gave me that that’s hear what Will is saying. It’s very clear distinction, it can’t be sorted at part of the same transaction. So very careful, all right.

Will Smith III 4:07
Can’t be part of same transaction can’t be contingent on you doing something else. But the main thing is, is that, you know, you certainly can’t just straight up purchase it, you know, from somebody. So the way that you know, the adult sharing works here in the state is that you know, over the age of 21, and it’s simply just, you know, going over to a friend’s house, and it’s like you’re bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party. That’s the only way that you’re going to be able to at least for right now, to be able to share, you know what it is that you grow at home?

Scott Cardani 4:37
What makes sense. I mean, I guess you can go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of whiskey and take it to your friends and drink it. Certainly, you know, same idea, same idea, so it makes sense. I guess you technically I don’t, I never looked at this. So I’m just opining here I guess it would probably be illegal to sell that bottle whiskey to you.

Will Smith III 4:54
ABC and regulations prevents you from doing that. Yeah…

Scott Cardani 4:57
You have to buy this ABC. All right. Anything else about The sharing what do I need to know?

Will Smith III 5:02
The other thing is that you can’t exceed one ounce. So if you’re, let’s say you have two ounces, or however much you know that you have as a result of what you’ve grown, you still can’t exchange more than one ounce. So if you’re if you exchange more than one ounce, that’s when you’re gonna start looking at criminal penalties, or civil fines.

Scott Cardani 5:20
So that was a civil or criminal, when does it get criminal?

Will Smith III 5:23
it gets criminal if it’s after the first offense. So the first time around, they’re gonna hit you with a civil fine, just like it used to be, you know, when they decriminalized marijuana. But then once you get over that threshold, and you committed a second time, that’s when you start looking into penalties that are, you know, misdemeanors, nothing upwards towards felonies depending on the amount.

Scott Cardani 5:42
So, you know, what we’re trying to tell you again, is, we’re not encouraging, we’re just trying to give you that we’re lawyers, we deal with this a lot. We want people to be informed, because when you’re not informed, you do dumb things, and then you have to come see us if we can inform you prior to maybe you can do things right. And so, you know, a lot of people were starting to get into this grow. A lot of people were, you know, you know much about the medical marijuana card?

Will Smith III 6:08
A little bit. Yeah, I mean, they changed that law a little bit, too. And I don’t know if that’s for a conversation for another podcast, but your medical marijuana card, you know, the way that that works is that if you have a medical reason, and a doctor writes a prescription and says that this is, you know, the reason that you know, that you need this is marijuana for medical use, issue a card, and you can go to any one of the dispensaries, you know, in the state of Virginia. It’s become a little bit more difficult, because the way that it used to work was that you would just go online and talk to a doctor. I don’t know, if it was a real doctor, it was just a bot, but you put in some information, and then they would give you a card. And that was it. Now they’ve changed it a little bit. So that, you know, it actually has to be, you know, a real physician with a real reason, you know, has been medically cleared. And you can’t just say, well, I get depressed, sometimes I have anxiety, sometimes, you know, and then have it you know, just like, you know, rubber stamp it?

Scott Cardani 7:02
Are you allowed to share your medical marijuana?

Will Smith III 7:05
Absolutely not know. So, when we’re talking about, you know, the adult sharing part, if you acquire it, if you if you get it legally, if you purchase it legally through a dispensary for medical marijuana purposes, and then give to somebody else who doesn’t have a medical marijuana card, then it’s going to be the same, you know, penalties in place that we that we previously discussed. And so it’s gonna be more of a distribution situation that can potentially get you in trouble.

Scott Cardani 7:29
And you know, you really want to avoid these problems. And a lot of times we don’t think through it, like, you know, Jimmy’s offering us weed, and we never think about, you know, what the consequences are, where he got it from. So we need to be mindful of where the person who’s given you the week got it from. So we understand that, you know, we he kept, he is not allowed to purchase it, and then give it to you sell it to you never really allowed to sell it to you, period. So, the other thing I think that’s important on this topic is when you’re sharing, and one of the things that we run into all the time Will and I and every other attorney I know. But when you’re on probation, or you’re under sanction with the court, especially in a criminal case, and you start doing this stuff, there may be some legal things you can do. But man, does it not look good. That’s true. And I’ve never seen a judge go, Oh, you’re on medical marijuana. Congratulation. That’s awesome. Never once.

Will Smith III 8:22
Well, I think the big issue that people run in with that is that, you know, they try to wean themselves off marijuana, and then they try to use CBD instead. But as we’ve seen is that no CBD product is purely CBD, it all adds a percentage of THC, the active ingredient marijuana. So that, you know, that’s gonna violate you probably if you’re on probation.

Scott Cardani 8:43
Remember Will, what we’ve been taught for years is that marijuana is not addictive, right?

Will Smith III 8:48
That’s what they say.

Scott Cardani 8:49
Yeah, but we see people weaning off of it all the time. We see people can’t go a day without it a week without an hour without it. But you know, hey, it’s not addictive. So, you know, enter at your own risk. It’s kind of how they used to sell cigarettes for years. And, you know, all those lawsuits that came down the road when they started putting additives in it and all those things that make it more addictive. So, you know, be careful out there. This is a really new topic. It’s evolving pretty much regularly there’s cases coming out of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals and circuit courts and the law is shifting even in the judges hands and how they’re handling it is changing pretty dramatically and a pretty quick rate for things like this to change. So you know, we’ve went from absolutely no, to permission probably took off the training wheels before we even decided to take it ride a bike. But that’s that’s the way things happen sometimes, so we want you to be informed. Be careful. Remember to like and subscribe. We thank you for being here today and have a great week.

Will Smith III 9:47
Thanks.

What To Do When… Outro 9:48

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of What To Do When… For more episodes, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and we encourage you to check archives to listen to previous topics. Tune in next week for a new episode and some fresh perspective from Critzer Cardani.

Need Legal Representation? Contact Critzer Cardani.

We look forward to helping you in this venture and Good Luck!

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