okay, cannabis banking reform bill safe banking has passed
the House of Representatives five separate times, but its
fate is still uncertain as the Senate moles. The
national defense authorization act here with more on this is
cheddar cannabis reporter Chloe, aiello Chloe, good to
see you on this monday for anyone who isn't familiar
, what is safe banking and how did it come
to be included in the N. D. A
. Aah, I will say thinking would seek to
open up the banking services to cannabis companies that are
operating legally within their given market because cannabis is federally
illegal. Many banks will not serve cannabis companies,
even if they are operating perfectly legally in their home
state. Uh, those banks that do take on
significant risk up to, you know, facing consequences
if something goes wrong up to and including loss of
their federal charter. And even if they don't incur
these sorts of consequences, they are have to adhere
to onerous reporting requirements that come along with serving cannabis
businesses. So if cannabis companies do manage to get
a bank account and there are banks and credit unions
that work with cannabis companies, there are still some
basic services that are unavailable to them. It's difficult
for them to get loans. For example, they
can't use credit card processing in their, you know
, dispensaries and in spite of the fact that there
are some creative solutions to this, It's still a
very cash heavy industry which does pose risk, you
know, just last month or in November, there
was a spate of robberies in San Francisco that targeted
Cannabis businesses. Campus businesses are easy targets because they
have product sitting around, they have cash sitting around
and you know, would be criminals know this.
So in November they did make off with about$5
million San Francisco. So this is a real and
ongoing problem. Safe banking would protect those banks that
choose to serve legal cannabis companies, cutting down on
some of these risks. And it has traditionally been
a bipartisan bill passed the House, as you mentioned
five separate times, sometimes as a standalone bill,
sometimes when included in other legislation like covid relief,
for example, most recently it has been included in
the National Defense authorization act, proponents of the bill
have argued that its inclusion in this bigger bill that
always passes would make it more likely to pass.
Um, and also others have argued it is a
matter of national security because of the public health risks
that we just mentioned. Yeah, Chloe, it
sounds like it's pretty popular, has bipartisan support multiple
times. So what's the hold up so far?
Well, you know, this does, as you
mentioned, have support from both democrats and republicans and
obviously overwhelming support in the House. Uh, actually
in the Senate has 29 Democratic co sponsors and it
has six Republican cosponsors in the Senate, but it
does face opposition from two distinct groups that are arguing
different things. So one of these is conservative lawmakers
who have, you know, long standing concerns about
cannabis overall, but there's another group of more progressive
lawmakers that don't oppose the bill's intentions per se,
but they do have certain convictions on cannabis how cannabis
reform should come about. So that does include Senate
Majority Leader chuck schumer, Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden
and Senator Cory Booker, who prefer a more comprehensive
approach to cannabis policy, like, for example,
their Joint cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, that does
have a considerable amount of equity provisions in it.
Booker actually said when they released this bill that he
would quote, lay myself down to prevent the passage
of safe banking with before something that had more considerable
equity provisions in it, because he was worried that
the banking would benefit more predominantly white run cannabis businesses
. Equity of course is important. We talk about
it a lot in the cannabis industry because, you
know, communities of color are disproportionately impacted by punitive
cannabis laws, which is why, you know,
some lawmakers are so, um, you know,
convinced that they should pass something with equity first,
a lot to consider their one last question very loaded
here, Chloe, what is the future of cannabis
reform here in the US as far as you can
predict? Obviously, you know, a difficult question
there, but you know, from what we know
, there are some pretty comprehensive bills floating around Congress
right now, like cannabis administration and opportunity Act that
I mentioned, which contains both regulations. Um,
it has a lot of equity included in it,
also the more act which is very equity focused as
well. But it's pretty widely known that these bigger
bills that promote either, You know, federal decriminalization
or federal legalization don't really have the support they need
to pass. You know, President Biden himself has
said that he is in favor of medical cannabis legalization
, but not federal legalization. Uh, it does
face significant hurdles in the Senate where you have to
get 60 votes. Um, so what folks are
thinking, experts are thinking is that a more viable
route is to put some sort of lighter equity provisions
into something like safe banking because it is so popular
, The political calculus of kind of holding out that
we're seeing schumer Wyden and Booker do is a little
bit unclear because we have Republican leadership maintaining steadfast opposition
to broader reforms. So it does seem logical.
I know a lot of the cannabis industry would like
for safe banking to pass and if you were to
sort of attach some of these equity provisions to that
some experts believe that that would appease both sides of
the equation here. Alright, cheddar news is cannabis
reporter Chloe. Hello, thank you so much for
breaking all of that down for us