Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas has been arrested and charged over an alleged bribery and racketeering scheme involving the distribution of illegal marijuana through a medical cannabis business, the US Justice Department said.
Ms Lucas, 82, surrendered to law enforcement on Thursday morning in connection with the federal indictment. She faces five of the eight charges brought against her.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia allege that Ms Lucas led the scheme from at least 2019, using her political influence to secure legislation and regulations that benefited herself and her alleged co-conspirators while shielding the enterprise from state enforcement.
The indictment accuses her and six other defendants of conspiring to distribute and possess marijuana, conspiring to launder money, money laundering and bribery. Ms Lucas is alleged to have directed the purchase and sale of more than 100 kilograms of illegal marijuana through her legal medical cannabis business.
Her co-defendants include her daughters, Lisa-Lucas Burke and Theresa Lucas-Lamb, and her grandson, Ryan Eichelberger.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said the charges “reveal the behavior of a public servant who will put her own financial interests before the people she was elected to serve”.
The case follows federal searches nearly six months ago at Ms Lucas’s office and The Cannabis Outlet, a shop in Portsmouth that she co-owns. A source familiar with the investigation said at the time that it had begun during the Biden administration.
Prosecutors allege that Ms Lucas received violation notices from Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in 2023 and 2024 after cannabis products sold at The Cannabis Outlet were found not to comply with state law.
She is also alleged to have told an unnamed co-conspirator that she wanted a recreational cannabis licence to create “generational wealth” for herself and her family, adding: “this is my last chance.”
In a phone call with a Virginia state lawmaker in March, Ms Lucas allegedly said she needed the recreational cannabis industry to begin because “when I did it, it was obviously illegal”.
Medical marijuana can be sold by licensed dispensaries in Virginia, while people may possess a limited amount for personal use. The state legislature legalised recreational cannabis sales in July, with regulated retail sales due to begin next year.
Ms Lucas sponsored a legalisation bill in the Virginia Senate in 2021 and has backed measures to decriminalise marijuana.
She is the Senate’s president pro tempore and has served in Virginia’s General Assembly since first being elected in 1991. She was re-elected in 2023 for a four-year term and is not due to stand again until 2027.
Ms Lucas was also a prominent figure in the Democrats’ effort to redraw Virginia’s congressional map. The plan, which added four Democratic-leaning seats, was approved in a ballot referendum in April but was later rejected by the Virginia Supreme Court.
