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A key Senate committee has officially scheduled a hearing for a bipartisan marijuana banking bill for next week.<\/p>\n
The Senate Banking Committee will take up the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act on Thursday, May 11 at a meeting titled \u201cExamining Cannabis Banking Challenges of Small Businesses and Workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hours before the hearing was scheduled, the panel\u2019s chairman, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), told reporters that senators planned to \u201cmove quickly\u201d<\/a> on the legislation from Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT).<\/p>\n The description of the event, which will follow an executive session on unrelated matters, says that both senators will participate as witnesses.<\/p>\n The scheduling<\/a> of a hearing comes as senators on both sides of the aisle have pushed for urgent action<\/a> on the standalone measure.<\/p>\n The SAFE Banking Act would protect banks that work with state-legal cannabis businesses from being penalized by federal regulators. The latest version has been amended in several ways that have encouraged advocates<\/a>, but the plan is to further revise it on the floor to incorporate additional equity provisions.<\/p>\n Brown recently indicated that action on the bill had been delayed because of what he described as attempts by banking industry representatives to use the legislation as a vehicle for policies that would \u201cweaken bank rules.\u201d It wasn\u2019t immediately clear what he meant by that, but appears that now his concerns have been addressed.<\/p>\n Merkley tweeted on Thursday that he and Daines \u201creintroduced the bipartisan SAFE Banking Act to reform outdated laws that force legal cannabis businesses to operate entirely in cash\u2014a dangerous system that puts employees and communities at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a path to a hearing and floor vote,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s get it done!\u201d<\/p>\n The SAFE Banking Act is considered one of the more passable pieces of cannabis legislation this session under a divided Congress with Republicans in control of the House. A former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)\u00a0recently wrote an op-ed for Marijuana Moment<\/a>\u00a0explaining how the new political dynamics could actually bolster the bill\u2019s prospects of passage this year.<\/p>\n Schumer, for his part, has reiterated his commitment to advancing the marijuana banking legislation with criminal justice provisions included, calling the broader effort to repair the harms of the drug war\u00a0a \u201cmoral responsibility\u201d for Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, the norm for the cannabis businesses is to operate on all cash, and that is simply not fair: it exposes them to too many risks and stifles their opportunities to grow,\u201d Schumer said in a Senate floor speech. \u201cCongress should be in the business of promoting entrepreneurs, promoting job growth, not holding these things back.\u201d<\/p>\n A vote in the Senate last month on separate marijuana legislation, however, has raised some questions about whether any modest cannabis reform is achievable under the current congressional makeup. Senate Republicans\u00a0blocked a procedural motion to advance a bipartisan bill<\/a>\u00a0to simply require studies into the medical potential of cannabis for military veterans with chronic pain and PTSD.<\/p>\n The standalone SAFE Banking Act has been approved along largely bipartisan lines in the House in some form several times in recent years. But it\u2019s consistently stalled out in the Senate under both Democratic and Republican leadership.<\/p>\n Last month, Schumer said that he was \u201cdisappointed\u201d that the 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\u00a0lawmakers will continue to \u201cwork in a bipartisan way\u201d<\/a>\u00a0to get the job done.<\/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 is sponsoring the House version of the SAFE Banking Act, 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 \u2014 Numerous cannabis bills have been filed in Congress in recent weeks beside the banking legislation.<\/p>\n For example, bipartisan lawmakers in both chambers reintroduced legislation last month to\u00a0provide a safe harbor to insurance companies<\/a>\u00a0that work with state-legal cannabis businesses.<\/p>\n Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) introduced legislation last month 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 Also last 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 Texas Senate Leader Blocks Democrat\u2019s Attempt To Let Voters Decide On Marijuana Legalization<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Key Senate Committee Officially Schedules Hearing On Marijuana Banking Bill For Next Week<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A key Senate committee has officially scheduled a hearing for a bipartisan marijuana banking bill for next week. The Senate Banking Committee will take up the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act on Thursday, May 11 at a meeting titled \u201cExamining Cannabis Banking Challenges of Small Businesses and Workers.\u201dContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":64593,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64592"}],"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=64592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64594,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64592\/revisions\/64594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Key Senate Committee Officially Schedules Hearing On Marijuana Banking Bill For Next Week<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"