As of early April, auto-enrollment retirement program OregonSaves will officially allow cannabis businesses, as well as individuals employed by those businesses, to sign up for membership.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really excited about making it possible for everybody in Oregon to save for their retirement and remove all the barriers we possibly can in that regard,\u201d Oregon Treasurer Tobias Read told Cannabis Now. \u201cWe think it\u2019s important for people, no matter what industry they work in, to have a chance to be in control of their financial future, and we\u2019re excited to that that is now the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0program<\/a>, which automatically diverts a portion of a participating employee\u2019s gross income into a private retirement fund, kicked off in July 2017. Most recently, it expanded to include gig workers and contract employees, alongside cannabusinesses. OregonSaves was the first auto-enrollment program of its kind to get off the ground, though states like California, Illinois and New Jersey have since followed suit and enacted similar legislation.<\/p>\n When the New York Times\u00a0spoke to workers<\/a>\u00a0a few months after the program\u2019s launch in November 2018, most of those interviewed worked at small businesses and seemed happy to be given an easy route for retirement savings. A little more than a year later, OregonSaves was\u00a0praised<\/a>\u00a0in a Forbes op-ed as a positive contributor to financial security for families.<\/p>\n And according to Read, in the year and a half since the program began, participants have already set aside 18 million dollars in retirement savings. \u201cEvery week, we see more people and more dollars coming in,\u201d he says. \u201cWe see it becoming more well-known and accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n Read also says that so far, around 30 different cannabis businesses have already signed up for the program. \u201cWe literally sent a letter to every business that\u2019s registered with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission with a with a cannabis license,\u201d he says, and added that he and his team also make house calls to interested parties.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a person\u2019s own money, with no claims on it by anyone else, the state or the employer, and it\u2019s portable so they can take it with them as they move from job to job throughout their career,\u201d Read says. \u201cFor us, it\u2019s really about empowering individuals and giving them the choices that they want.\u201d<\/p>\n This inclusion of cannabis industry workers in a state-run savings program is particularly notable when contrasted to the way those workers have been regarded on a national level, especially recently. For instance, there\u2019s the latest\u00a0proclamation<\/a>\u00a0from the Department of Homeland Security that justified denying immigrants citizenship because their participation in state-legal cannabis activities \u2014 be it as\u00a0workers<\/a>, medical patients or recreational consumers \u2014 bars them from possessing the \u201cgood moral character\u201d required to become an American citizen.<\/p>\n And, of course, there\u2019s the fact that marijuana remains federally illegal, and though hemp is in the clear as of the\u00a02018 Farm Bill<\/a>, CBD is still stuck in a legal gray area due to\u00a0feet-dragging from the FDA<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting that this announcement comes in the midst of a federal push to clarify\u00a0cannabis banking policies<\/a>, a complicated legal battle that has thus far resulted in a range of rules that vary widely from state to state.<\/p>\n It remains to be seen if other auto-enrollment programs like Illinois Secure Choice, in a state where medical marijuana is legal, or California\u2019s CalSavers will once again follow Oregon\u2019s lead and explicitly open up their services to members of the cannabis industry \u2014 but for the sake of the future of workers, one can only hope the answer is yes.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, does your employer offer you a retirement savings plan?<\/p>\n The post Oregon Welcomes Cannabis Businesses Into Its Auto-Enrollment Retirement Program<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
As of early April, auto-enrollment retirement program OregonSaves will officially allow cannabis businesses, as well as individuals employed by those businesses, to sign up for membership. \u201cWe\u2019re really excited about making it possible for everybody in Oregon to save for their retirement and remove all the barriers we possibly canContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6726,50,459,1483,136,170,185,9839,9840],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34910"}],"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\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34911,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34910\/revisions\/34911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Oregon Welcomes Cannabis Businesses Into Its Auto-Enrollment Retirement Program<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"