Police Chief In This Low-Crime City Blames Illicit Cannabis For Its Woes, Prompting State Senator’s Push For Legal Sales
Virginia Beach Police Chief Paul Neudigate said last week that the illicit cannabis market is largely to blame for shooting violence.
“Where you may think it will be heroin, you may think it will be cocaine, methamphetamine, nope. It’s marijuana. We have young men losing their lives in this community today over 200 dollars’ worth of marijuana,” Neudigate told 13News Now. “Marijuana drives a lot of my shooting violence, it drives a lot of my robbery violence, and it drives a lot of my homicide violence.”
Following these statistics, State Sen. Aaron Rouse (D) renewed a call for legal cannabis sales, saying in a post on X that the solution to the violent crime in the city is simple.
In March, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed legislation that would have established a legal marketplace for cannabis, making good on his often repeated comments that he didn’t “have a lot of interest in it” …