It was an oversight that led to a loophole.
That's the prevailing opinion, but considering many of the proponents of it are also outright for legalization, I suspect at least some of the majority that voted for it were hoodwinked.
Yeah delta 8 will definitely just show up as THC on a piss test, and they won't give a fuck if you say it was the legal form of the illegal drug or not.
Unless you have some specific knowledge of how Virginia thinks about it, they may indeed give a fuck. Some states have become so apathetic that even an actual hot piss test with the dude on probation admitting it was actually weed won't bother doing anything about it for just a one time thing.
I'm not saying BMJ is smart enough to consider this (and with something that looks like DV possibly caused by drugs, they may take a very dim view of it), but unless we know his specific probation terms, he's allowed to do anything legal that isn't specifically prohibited. So if, as it sometimes says in bail terms, you're prohibited not from owning firearms, but from "unlawfully owning firearms," that doesn't prohibit owning firearms legally (actually heard a bail hearing just yesterday where someone got exactly this while waiting for a case involving a lolcow with a thread here). If you're prohibited from "unlawful intoxicants," but not alcohol, you're allowed to drink alcohol. And you wouldn't be prohibited from consuming legal hemp products.
Quite often, they explicitly prohibit ALL non-prescribed intoxicants, and even legal hemp products would be a direct violation. But I haven't seen what he got. Intoxicants might not be prohibited at all. They are sometimes not prohibited even in what this is, a felony drug case. And again, while waiting hours for a lolcow case just yesterday (Phil/ADF on a Webex stream) there was a case (in Oregon) where someone had a drug count in his arraignment and was not prohibited from intoxicants, just the usual "obey the law" instructions.
So I'm not pulling this out of my ass, this is routine to the point that if you spent a single day in court you'd see examples. And I'll note that Oregon (and Portland in particular where this was held) has some of the gayest gun laws in the country, they only prohibited the guy with a gun violation from unlawfully owning.
If anything, they should have prohibited BMJ from gamba because that's what results in most of his violence IMO, and ordered him to get a job. I'm going to guess they didn't. And I'm glad they didn't.