Southwest Virginia doesn't strike anyone as marijuana country, but I wanted to share an interesting geographic quirk of Virginia and how the marijuana debate in Richmond is playing out with geography in mind.
First is this map below:
Virginia is a unique state in many ways, but the most interesting is it's rather elongated shape. Most people don't realize that Virginia actually holds the national record when it comes to territory distant from the state capital.
Cumberland Gap, Virginia, for example, is closer to 9(!) other state capitals than to Richmond, the capital of the State that governs it.
- 129 miles - Frankfort
- 164 miles - Charleston
- 177 miles - Nashville
- 201 miles - Atlanta
- 233 miles - Columbia
- 234 miles - Columbus
- 257 miles - Indianapolis
- 286 miles - Raleigh
- 329 miles - Montgomery
- 350 miles - Richmond (actual city that governs Cumberland Gap, VA)
- 465 miles - Arlington/Alexandria (urban core of Northern Virginia)
This quirk of geography is found nowhere else in the U.S. save the Southwest extremity of Virginia, as you can see above (the red and black shading only apply to Virginia).
The other interesting thing is politics. The center of political power in Virginia is Northern Virginia, a region of 3,160,000 people hugging the Nation's capital. And Northern Virginia is extremely liberal.
So we essentially have a dynamic where Southwest Virginia is being governed by a state capital 350 miles away and whose state legislators are disproportionately from a region 465 miles away.
Why is this also interesting? Because Virginia is legalizing marijuana in the coming days and there's a debate about whether counties should be given the power to ban dispensaries in their jurisdiction. Democrats appear likely to reject that provision, however, and Virginia's geography is the reason.
Southwest Virginia is extremely conservative (Appalachian Trump Country) and Cumberland Gap's parent county (Lee County) voted 84% Trump. It looks like this:
In other words, it's a county that would absolutely ban marijuana dispensaries if it could.
If counties can't deny dispensaries, however, it's quite likely that extreme Southwest Virginia would become home to a number of dispensaries appealing to out-of-state customers.
Here is the map of states that have legalized marijuana (blue). Notice something interesting? Yes, the 9 states whose capitals are closer to Cumberland Gap, VA, than to Richmond all ban marijuana: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia. Further, all 9 of these states have Republican legislative majorities (making marijuana legalization an unlikely prospect in the near-to-mid term).
Virginia, however, is now a Blue state, since the population center hugs the Atlantic Coast and is essentially an extension of the Northeast Corridor. So Virginia is finding itself in a very enviable position: a weirdly shaped progressive state with an unusual appendage that cuts deep into Appalachia. The end result of this could mean that Southwest Virginia becomes a "Southern Capital of Legal Weed."
Another place that will massively benefit is Bristol, Virginia. The left-hand side of this street is the Commonwealth of Virginia (you can see the blue Virginia state flag on the ugly gray building). The right-hand side is Tennessee (you can see the red Tennessee flag interspersed with the American flag down the entire street).
In a few years, you could see a number of marijuana dispensaries to the left-hand side of the street, and nothing on the right. Even worse, given Tennessee's conservatism, you could have police on the Tennessee side waiting to arrest anybody who crosses the yellow line on the road.
Just more state-level craziness!
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