Local • Perspective

An old pot arrest destroyed a Virginia veteran’s life. Now that it’s legal there, that should never happen again.

July 1, 2021 at 7:04 p.m. EDT

At midnight Thursday, the pot bros were outside whooping and hollering, celebrating the moment Virginia became the first Southern state to legalize recreational marijuana.

And all day on July 1, the day the new law went into effect, folks in Teva sandals and work shoes and comfy sneakers stood in line at Metro stations to get free seeds from pot activists who were encouraging aspiring growers.

Former Virginian Howard Bailey was following all this from Jamaica, where “people smoke weed every day” and where he — an avowed nonsmoker — is living in exile, thanks to an ancient pot conviction on his record.

He insists he’s not bitter about marijuana’s new legal status in Virginia. ... “To see somebody smile, to see somebody have a burden lifted, that’s a good thing,” Bailey told me over the phone as he clanked around alone in his Trelawny kitchen on the northern coast of Jamaica. “But I don’t think there’s anything there that will help me.”

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Twitter: @petulad

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