TRY, TRY AGAIN U.S. Senators Plan to Introduce Bill to Legalize Marijuana Banking

By Jeanne Davant for Colorado Springs Indy, April 19 https://tinyurl.com/colorado-spring-indy 

Democrats in the U.S. Senate are planning another attempt at allowing cannabis businesses legal access to financial institutions, according to a March 7 post by Route Fifty, an organization that connects state and local governments.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the SAFE Banking Act from inclusion in the omnibus spending bill in December, dashing hopes of many in the industry that they’d be able to use banks and credit cards, like other businesses. Other attempts to attach the bill to broader legislation have similarly failed.

The Democratic senators are looking to recruit bipartisan sponsors for a bill they intend to bring before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, the report states. They’re hoping that bipartisan sponsorship will get the bill through the committee and increase its chances of passage by the full Senate. The bill could be publicly announced later this month.

The SAFE Banking Act, which would have allowed marijuana businesses to access banking services, has passed in the U.S. House seven times, but it’s been unable to clear the Senate.

Because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, banks can’t serve marijuana businesses, even those legal in states, without risking prosecution for aiding and abetting federal crimes or money laundering.

That’s forced dispensaries and recreational stores to deal largely in cash, which makes them targets for robberies and puts employees in jeopardy.

The Credit Union National Association has estimated that one out of every two dispensaries has been robbed or burglarized, the Route Fifty report states.

Organizations including the National Association of Counties and the U.S. Conference of Mayors have expressed support for reform when it comes to marijuana banking.

Pardoning pot offenders

The U.S. Justice Department has opened an online application portal for people seeking a pardon for marijuana-related convictions.

President Joe Biden announced last October that his administration would issue pardons to eligible people with federal convictions for minor offenses such as possession.

“There are thousands of people who have prior federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result,” Biden said at the time.

The pardons will not apply to violations of state and local laws, which constitute the vast majority of cannabis-related arrests. According to NORML, White House officials estimate that the directive will apply to about 20,000 people, out of nearly 29 million who have been arrested for marijuana violations over the past several decades.

But 24 states, including Colorado, have enacted laws providing for expungement or otherwise setting aside of low-level marijuana convictions. 

According to data compiled by NORML and reported in a March 3 post, state and local officials have issued more than 100,000 pardons and more than 1.7 million expungements since 2018.

The new online portal can be accessed at justice.gov/pardon.

‘Wet and green lab’

In the first-ever training event of its kind in the nation, 18 volunteers took hits of pot and downed alcoholic drinks as 30 police officers and 18 drug recognition experts watched.

The event, held in February at the Guilford, Maryland, Yacht Club, was designed to determine the effects of alcohol and marijuana consumption. Groups of six subjects consumed only marijuana, only alcohol or both alcohol and cannabis, and all were tested by the various means law enforcement officers use to determine impairment.

One of the results of the “wet and green lab,” according to a March 6 report at CTInsider, was that the six subjects who did both pot and booze performed poorly on simulated road tests, even though they were below the legal blood alcohol limit. 

Connecticut allows both medical and recreational marijuana sales.

Rec pot not OK in OK

Voters in Oklahoma rejected a state ballot question March 7 to legalize recreational marijuana. Sixty-two percent voted no on State Question 820 after a last-minute blitz by opponents including faith leaders, law enforcement, prosecutors, Oklahoma’s Gov. Kevin Stitt and most of the state’s GOP legislators, PBS says in a March 7 post. 

Oklahoma has a robust medical marijuana program, and according to a March 7 report in The New York Times, nearly 10 percent of the folks in the state have medical marijuana cards. 

Oklahoma legalized marijuana for medical use in 2018 and allowed large-scale cultivation operations, and as of 2021, more than 2,300 dispensaries had been licensed in the state — far more than the number in Colorado (825) or California (774), both more populous states.

“We have something like seven or eight thousand growers in Oklahoma,” Stitt tells The New York Times. “It’s taken us a while to get our arms around that.”

Had the recreational marijuana measure passed, Oklahoma would have been the 22nd state to allow adult-use marijuana.

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