I<\/span>t\u2019s been more than two weeks since Attorney General Jeff Sessions escalated the federal government\u2019s war on legal marijuana.<\/p>\n Anger and resistance, speculation and anxiety, and some histrionics have filled the time since Sessions revoked the Cole Memo<\/a>, an Obama-era Justice Department policy directive, interpreted as tacit acceptance for (state and local) law-abiding cannabis businesses. But since Sessions\u2019s announcement, the federal government hasn\u2019t followed through<\/a> on the attorney general\u2019s threat. There\u2019s been no prosecutions filed by U.S. attorneys, no Drug Enforcement Administration raids and little further on the topic from Sessions or his lieutenants.<\/p>\n However, if his follow-through is in doubt, there\u2019s no denying that Sessions didn\u2019t need to immediately act on his threats in order to cause trouble for cannabis. Because of Sessions\u2019s announcement on Jan. 4, marijuana banking is now back in the same familiar state of chaos.<\/p>\n On Jan. 4,\u00a0Sessions announced the \u201crescission of previous guidance documents<\/a>\u201d related to marijuana enforcement. Most of the attention has gone to the elimination of the August 2013 memo from former Deputy Attorney General James Cole, but this policy change may have been mostly symbolic.<\/p>\n Other \u201cguidance documents\u201d include a 2014 document from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, that instructed financial institutions how to do business with marijuana companies. Sessions\u2019s announcement made no mention of FinCEN or whether that memo was also revoked \u2014 but according to Reuters<\/a>, which reported on Jan. 11 that the news blindsided FinCEN, those \u201cprotections\u201d are still in place.<\/p>\n But those are weak protections, and the fact that it took a week for federal regulators themselves to figure out what was going on says it all. Uncertainty and confusion reigns, and this is how Sessions has caused the most trouble.<\/p>\n Marijuana\u2019s banking troubles are well known. Dispensaries have had to hire armored cars and armed guards to ferry stupendous shipments of cash in order to pay taxes due to federal and state governments. Prior to Jan. 4, things had been improving somewhat:\u00a0Some cannabis operations quietly opened accounts with a few bold community banks and credit unions<\/a>, which used the Obama-era instructions to convince board members and shareholders that they could accept cannabis deposits without issue.<\/p>\n John Chiang, California\u2019s state treasurer and\u00a0a candidate for governor, launched an official study group to examine the problem<\/a>\u00a0(and suggest solutions, none of which have been implemented). In the study group, a few have floated the idea of a state-run \u201cpublic bank\u201d to handle the flood of cannabis money.<\/p>\n Even then, private banks accepting marijuana money didn\u2019t exactly advertise: One Maryland-based institution, named publicly by some of its customers in a\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0article, did what it could to reduce its public profile, and with good reason.<\/p>\n Before the announcement from Sessions, there was still significant risk associated with marijuana banking, of the same stripe that\u2019s convinced insurance agencies to not underwrite marijuana operations, but it wasn\u2019t crisis level.<\/p>\n Now, however, the institutional panic has set in once again, as CNBC noted<\/a>, and right when California\u2019s $7 billion recreational marijuana market is set to rapidly expand with the beginnings of retail sales of recreational cannabis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cThe withdrawal of the Cole memo really couldn\u2019t have come at a worse time, because now is the time that the types of banks and credit unions that are willing to take on more risk would have been entering the market,\u201d\u00a0said Robert McVay, a Seattle-based cannabis law attorney, in an interview with CNBC.<\/a><\/p>\n In the weeks since Sessions\u2019s annoucement, it appears McVay\u2019s opinion may have been premature, as the FinCEN guidance is still in effect. But plenty damage has still been done.<\/p>\n \u201cSome have stopped taking on new accounts,\u201d added Dustin Eide, the CEO and founder of CanPay, a mobile-payments app that\u2019s done business with marijuana operations, and made news in September 2017 by landing a deal to handle official marijuana business in Hawaii\u2014but with the cover of the FinCEN memo.<\/p>\n Since then, \u201cwe do know of one institution that was getting ready to launch cannabis banking program that has decided to suspend their launch indefinitely,\u201d he told CNBC.<\/p>\n So now what? That\u2019s the $7 billion question. State elected officials, including Oregon\u2019s attorney general,\u00a0have pleaded with Congress to do something<\/a> \u2014 the same something, banking reform, that marijuana-friendly lawmakers have been trying to accomplish in Washington for years with no luck.<\/p>\n In the meantime, California\u2019s cannabis economy is back in a familiar place: Sitting on a mountain of money with nowhere to put it, a situation created by the very government that\u2019s due a portion of that mountain in taxes.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you see a solution for marijuana banking?<\/p>\n The post Jeff Sessions Targets Marijuana Banking, Reignites Fears<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Attorney General Jeff Sessions hasn\u2019t launched any raids or prosecutions since he revoked the Cole Memo on Jan. 4, but he\u2019s created the same familiar chaos at the bank \u2014 and that might be enough. It\u2019s been more than two weeks since Attorney General Jeff Sessions escalated the federal government\u2019sContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,80,170,1534,96,857],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23083,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23082\/revisions\/23083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Jeff Sessions Targets Marijuana Banking, Reignites Fears<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"