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Bipartisan congressional lawmakers refiled another marijuana bill on Thursday\u2014this one proposing to provide a safe harbor to insurance companies that work with state-legal cannabis businesses.<\/p>\n
The Clarifying Law Around Insurance of Marijuana (CLAIM) Act is being sponsored Reps. Nydia M. Vel\u00e1zquez (D-NY) and Warren Davidson (R-OH). This is the third Congress in a row that the measure has been introduced.<\/p>\n
The legislation would protect insurers, brokers and agents from being penalized by federal regulators for providing insurance services to state-licensed marijuana companies. It was filed just one day after House and Senate lawmakers filed a related bill<\/a> to safeguard banks that work with the industry.<\/p>\n \u201cInsurance companies are often times reluctant to provide coverage to cannabis-based businesses, due to discrepancies between federal and state laws,\u201d Vel\u00e1zquez said<\/a> in a press release.<\/p>\n Cannabis businesses deserve the same access to insurance as any other legitimate enterprise.<\/p>\n Today, I intro’d the CLAIM Act with @WarrenDavidson<\/a> to ensure legal cannabis entrepreneurs can get the insurance they need to protect their livelihoods.https:\/\/t.co\/RwvOE5McMD<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Rep. Nydia Velazquez (@NydiaVelazquez) April 27, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n \u201cThese promising new businesses have no safety net in place and are left extremely vulnerable to natural disasters or fires that may destroy all they\u2019ve worked to build,\u201d the congresswoman said. \u201cThis bill will help entrepreneurs operating in the legal cannabis sector access to the insurance they need to protect their business.\u201d<\/p>\n Davidson said that insurance firms \u201cmust be allowed to participate for the marketplace to function properly, they play a critical role for the development of small businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe CLAIM Act takes needed corrective action by granting the ability to insure risk without having otherwise lawful markets blocked by regulators,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This latest version of the CLAIM Act is identical to the bill filed last Congress. On the Senate side, it has been sponsored by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ)<\/a> but hasn\u2019t yet been refiled this year.<\/p>\n As it stands, cannabis firms are restricted in their ability to gain property, casualty and title insurance coverage. This bill would prohibit penalizing insurance providers for simply covering those businesses, and it would bar insurers from terminating or limiting policies for marijuana companies or ancillary businesses due to the nature of their enterprise.<\/p>\n The legislation also includes a requirement that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) study and issue a report on \u201cbarriers to marketplace entry, including in the licensing process, and the access to financial services for potential and existing minority-owned and women-owned cannabis-related legitimate businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n It also provides protections for employees of insurers, affirming that they could not be held liable just because they work with a cannabis company.<\/p>\n Supporters of the legislation have argued that providing insurance access to these businesses would mitigate safety risks and prevent the companies from being denied bank financing, which can occur when the businesses lack insurance coverage.<\/p>\n Like last session, the reintroduction of the proposal roughly coincides with the filing of the bipartisan Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act to protect banks that provide financial services to the cannabis sector.<\/p>\n \u2014 With a divided Congress that has Republicans in control of the House, the expectation is that lawmakers will need to focus on incremental marijuana measures like the banking bill, instead of broader justice-centered legalization, to get any amount of reform passed this session.<\/p>\n Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d that a so-called SAFE Plus package of marijuana banking and expungements legislation he worked on last year didn\u2019t advance, saying \u201cwe came close,\u201d but \u201cwe ran into opposition in the last minute.\u201d He said lawmakers will continue to \u201cwork in a bipartisan way\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to get the job done.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil we reach our goal, I promise to be in your corner and work like hell bringing federal cannabis policy into the 21st century,\u201d he said. \u201cWe will need you, as we always do, to reach out to members of both parties, in both chambers\u2014especially Republican\u2014so we can make progress on cannabis reform.\u201d<\/p>\n The majority leader has been\u00a0holding meetings with Democratic<\/a>\u00a0and Republican members<\/a>\u00a0in the early months of the new Congress to discuss cannabis reform proposals that might have bipartisan buy-in this year.<\/p>\n For his part, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said recently that lawmakers are\u00a0working to \u201cresurrect\u201d the cannabis reform package<\/a>, acknowledging that failure to advance a banking fix for the industry \u201cliterally means that hundreds of businesses go out of business.<\/p>\n Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), who filed a bill to allow marijuana businesses to take federal tax deductions<\/a>\u00a0last week, said at a recent press briefing that thinks it\u2019s important that advocates and lawmakers align on any incremental proposals to end the drug war,\u00a0warning against an \u201call-or-nothing\u201d mentality<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a number of other cannabis bills were filed last week leading up to 4\/20, though lawmakers didn\u2019t explicitly say that the timing was related to the unofficial marijuana holiday.<\/p>\n For example, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) introduced legislation last week to\u00a0protect the Second Amendment rights of people who use marijuana<\/a>\u00a0in legal states, allowing them to purchase and possess firearms that they\u2019re currently prohibited from having under federal law.<\/p>\n Reps. Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have filed a bill to\u00a0incentive state and local marijuana expungements<\/a>\u00a0with a federal grant program.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Joyce and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) filed a measure designed to\u00a0prepare the federal government for marijuana legalization<\/a>, directing the attorney general to form a commission to study and make recommendations about regulating cannabis in a way similar to alcohol.<\/p>\n Federal Law Enforcement Agency Says State-Legal Marijuana Activity Will No Longer Automatically Disqualify Job Applicants<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Insurance Companies That Work With Marijuana Businesses Would Be Protected Under Bipartisan Congressional Bill<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Bipartisan congressional lawmakers refiled another marijuana bill on Thursday\u2014this one proposing to provide a safe harbor to insurance companies that work with state-legal cannabis businesses. The Clarifying Law Around Insurance of Marijuana (CLAIM) Act is being sponsored Reps. Nydia M. Vel\u00e1zquez (D-NY) and Warren Davidson (R-OH). This is the thirdContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":64316,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64315"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64317,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64315\/revisions\/64317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Insurance Companies That Work With Marijuana Businesses Would Be Protected Under Bipartisan Congressional Bill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"