Richmond partner on roll-your-own cigarette legislation
Regulatory Compliance and Government Litigation practice group leader and Richmond partner Ashley Taylor was quoted in a January 26 Richmond Times-Dispatch article about a Virginia general assembly committee advancing legislation that would declare retail businesses with roll-your-own cigarette machines to be cigarette manufacturers, subject to the same taxes and regulations as cigarette companies. Against the legislation is RYO Machines LLC, which makes the roll-your-own cigarette machines and is represented by Taylor.
“They [the roll-your-own businesses] simply cannot obtain a federal tobacco-manufacturing permit,” he said. “It is a legal impossibility.”