Virginia’s move toward retail marijuana legalization is arriving with a familiar set of policy questions: how much to tax, how tightly to regulate, and who will actually benefit once legal sales begin. A recent report from the Mining Journal on rural Michigan suggests that these choices can shape whether a legal market strengthens local communities…

I stood on a muddy patch of yard staring at the skeleton of a deck and thought, This will be fine—until it wasn’t. That first week of timber and posts felt like a clean slate. By week three the crew had run into hidden drainage, a permit snag, and a supply shortage that pushed the…