Last week, the Obama administration announced new guidelines that it portrayed as a drastic change to the way marijuana businesses interact with banking services. Supporters touted the news as a "green light" for pot shops to gain access to traditional financial services, but banking officials say that the guidance, essentially, changes nothing.
“After a series of red lights, we expected this guidance to be a yellow one," Don Childears, president and CEO of the Colorado Bankers Association, said in a statement. "This isn’t close to that. At best, this amounts to ‘serve these customers at your own risk’ and it emphasizes all of the risks. This light is red.”
Steven Brudner, managing director of Merchant Services Consulting Group, told The Wall Street Journal that debit and credit card services will probably not be available to marijuana businesses either, since major credit card-processing banks do not want to expose themselves to the risks that still exist under the new guidance.
Due to the banks' fears of being implicated as money launderers, marijuana-related businesses are often forced into cash-only transactions, putting the retailers' safety at risk and creating issues involving taxes and employee payroll.
Colorado's legal marijuana businesses are already exceeding revenue estimates by the state, and as a result, they're in desperate need of access to banking services. Gov. John Hickenlooper announced this week that the state's total pot sales for the next fiscal year were estimated to reach about $610 million -- that's up more than $200 million from the cannabis industry's earlier estimates of approximately $400 million, annually.
Guidelines announced by the Treasury Department and a memo from a top Justice Department official were intended to ease concerns that the federal government would target banks working with marijuana-related businesses that are legal and regulated on the state level. Expanded banking access would enable them to function like traditional businesses, and implementing a reporting structure would allow the federal government to take a close look at how they operate.
However, the DOJ memo falls short of expressly protecting banks that work with state-legal, state-licensed marijuana businesses from prosecution.
Treasury officials said that they anticipated that the guidelines could encourage smaller and medium-sized banks to deal with marijuana businesses.
But the CBA strongly disagrees, with Childears saying in his statement that "no bank can comply" with these regulations.
"Bankers had expected the guidance to relieve them of the threat of prosecution should the open accounts for marijuana businesses, but the guidance does not do that," Childears said. "Instead, it reiterates reasons for prosecution and is simply a modified reporting system for banks to use. It imposes a heavy burden on them to know and control their customers’ activities, and those of their customers."
"An act of Congress is the only way to solve this problem," Childears added.
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) has sponsored a bill that would do just that. The Marijuana Access to Banking Act would create the protections for depository institutions needed so they can effectively provide financial services to marijuana-related businesses.
Perlmutter said that although the new guidance is an "important step," much more is needed.
“We need Congress to promptly consider and pass my legislation to provide certainty for financial institutions and the licensed marijuana related businesses to operate just like any other business,” Perlmutter said.
Currently, 20 states and the District of Columbia have legalized some form of marijuana, be it medical or recreational. One study suggests that the U.S. marijuana industry could be valued at over $10 billion by 2019.
Before You Go
“I think that most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in some places, and should be," he said back in 2000 in an interview with Rolling Stone. "We really need a re-examination of our entire policy on imprisonment.”
He's since spoken about the issue of marijuana and drug prohibition a number of times. Last year, he appeared in the documentary, "Breaking the Taboo," where he argued that the war on drugs has been a failure.
“I don't want to promote that but I also don't want to put people in jail who make a mistake," Paul said. "There are a lot of young people who do this and then later on in their twenties they grow up and get married and they quit doing things like this. I don't want to put them in jail and ruin their lives."
"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Robertson said in an interview with The New York Times in 2012. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."
Robertson has made similar remarks on his "700 Club" show before, but the Times, like many others, perhaps felt they must have misheard him.
“[T]o me, marijuana is no different than wine," he said in an interview with High Times. "It's a drug of choice. It's meant to alter your current state -- and that's not a bad thing. It's ridiculous that marijuana is still illegal. We're still fighting for it ... It comes down to individual decision-making. There are millions of people who smoke pot on a social basis and don't become criminals. So stop with that argument -- it doesn't work.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
From his campaign platform:
"By managing marijuana like alcohol and tobacco - regulating, taxing and enforcing its lawful use - America will be better off. The billions saved on marijuana interdiction, along with the billions captured as legal revenue, can be redirected against the individuals committing real crimes against society."
“Marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry," he said in an interview with High Times. "My wife says, and I agree with her, that what would be really great for Maine would be to legalize dope completely and set up dope stores the way that there are state-run liquor stores.”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
While marijuana has been made legal for various uses in a number of states, the Obama administration continues to enforce federal laws across the nation. This has led to numerous raids of marijuana-based businesses, as well as prosecutions of growers and other people involved in pot.
"I think it's about time we legalize marijuana," he said. "We have to make a choice in this country. We either put people who are smoking marijuana behind bars or we legalize it, but this little game we're playing in the middle is not helping us, it is not helping Mexico and it is causing massive violence on our southern border."
"Decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Portugal's 10 year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. We must stop criminalising drug users. Health and treatment should be offered to drug users - not prison. Bad drugs policies affect literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the world. We need to provide medical help to those that have problematic use - not criminal retribution."
"I don't tend to say this publicly, but we can see it's a curative thing. The narcotics industry is also enormous. It funds terrorism and - this is a huge problem in America - fuels the foreign gangs," he said. "More than 85 percent of men incarcerated in America are on drug-related offences. It costs $40,000 a year for every prisoner. If they were really serious about the economy there would be a sensible discussion about legalization."
While Obama and his administration have responded to state marijuana reforms by saying they must enforce federal laws against marijuana, the president has the power to reschedule the drug, which would allow federal authorities to shift resources away from a prohibitive approach.
"However, I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts," Palin said. "If somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society."While Obama has spoken repeatedly about not being interested in prosecuting small-time marijuana users, he hasn't done anything to prevent them from being busted by law enforcement in states where the drug is still illegal.
In 2012, the former president said he was fine with state legalization efforts, though he himself doesn't necessary support legalizing the drug.
“As president 35 years ago I called for decriminalizing -- but not legalizing -- the possession of marijuana,” Carter said. “Since then, U.S. drug policies have been very horrible to our own country because of an explosion in prison populations.”
"I don't have a problem with states experimenting with this sort of thing I think that's the role of states," Cuccinelli said, according to Ryan Nobles of WWBT.
“The proof will be in the policy. The war on drugs has gotten a really bad rap, when you ask people if they support the war on drugs they say no ... [Obama's] budget once again has the same old drug warrior policy ... I reject the assumption that everybody who is using drugs needs treatment or is an addict and needs to get arrested ... Not all drug use is abuse.”
He's kept up the fight for drug policy reform since.
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
“We've been fighting the war on drugs since the '60s. And guess what? Trillions of dollars later, we are losing," Sharpton said during a segment on MSNBC. "When you look at the disparities in sentencing drug offenders, hasn't this kind of injustice undermined the legitimacy of our criminal justice system?”
[H/T Marijuana Majority]
Tancredo continued, “The arguments against marijuana today are the same as the arguments against liquor years ago.”
Years later, the former congressman agreed to smoke pot on camera with a documentary filmmaker, a deal that he later backed out of.
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