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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says a committee vote on a marijuana banking bill will be scheduled \u201cin the near future\u201d following an initial hearing on Thursday<\/a>\u2014and he is reiterating plans to attach criminal justice reform provisions to the financial services measure.<\/p>\n In a speech on the floor on Thursday evening, Schumer said that the Senate Banking Committee meeting represented a \u201cbig step\u201d for the bipartisan Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which was refiled by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT) last month.<\/p>\n \u201cSAFE Banking would ensure cannabis businesses have equal access to critical banking infrastructure in states that have legalized cannabis,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve all heard the tales of small businesses and even larger ones walking around with a huge amount of cash because they can\u2019t do banking. SAFE Banking would change that and allow them to bank as other businesses because it is legal in many states.\u201d<\/p>\n Watch Schumer discuss the cannabis banking bill in the video below:<\/strong><\/p>\n \ufeff<\/span><\/p>\n He also reiterated plans to incorporate additional \u201ccriminal justice provisions\u2026most importantly the expungement of criminal records for certain low marijuana offenses\u201d after the bill clears committee and moves to the floor. On Thursday, he and two other top senators specifically discussed their intent to attach language<\/a> from the Harnessing by Pursuing Expungement (HOPE) Act<\/a>, providing federal grants to states and localities that facilitate cannabis clemency.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve made a lot of good, bipartisan progress on SAFE Banking last Congress, and after today\u2019s hearing we hope there will be a markup on this bill in the near future,\u201d Schumer said<\/a> on Thursday. \u201cWe\u2019re really moving forward in a record way on a very important issue.\u201d<\/p>\n Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-OH) also said recently that senators planned to \u201cmove quickly\u201d<\/a> on the legislation.<\/p>\n Senators on both sides of the aisle\u00a0have been pushing for urgent action<\/a> on the standalone bill, which would protect banks that work with state-legal cannabis businesses from being penalized by federal regulators.<\/p>\n A former top aide to Schumer\u00a0recently wrote an op-ed for Marijuana Moment<\/a>\u00a0explaining why the new makeup of the 118th Congress actually improves the prospects of passage for the SAFE Banking Act.<\/p>\n Schumer has emphasized 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 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 didn\u2019t advance last year, 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> to 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 Booker 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 The American Bankers Association (ABA) also\u00a0recently renewed its call for the passage<\/a> of the legislation. And all 50 of its state chapters did the same, as did insurance and union organizations, in recent letters to congressional leadership<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014 Numerous other cannabis bills have been filed in Congress in recent weeks beside the banking legislation.<\/p>\n For example, bipartisan congressional lawmakers recently filed a bill to mandate the automatic sealing of criminal records for\u00a0certain non-violent federal marijuana convictions<\/a>.<\/p>\n House and Senate lawmakers also reintroduced legislation last month to\u00a0provide a safe harbor to insurance companies<\/a>\u00a0that work with licensed marijuana 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 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 Minnesota Lawmakers Reach Agreement On First Round Of Marijuana Legalization Bill Changes In Conference Committee<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Schumer Wants Marijuana Banking Bill To Get Committee Vote \u2018In The Near Future,\u2019 Reiterating Plan To Attach \u2018Criminal Justice Provisions\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says a committee vote on a marijuana banking bill will be scheduled \u201cin the near future\u201d following an initial hearing on Thursday\u2014and he is reiterating plans to attach criminal justice reform provisions to the financial services measure. In a speech on the floor onContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":64947,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64946"}],"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=64946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64948,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64946\/revisions\/64948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Schumer Wants Marijuana Banking Bill To Get Committee Vote \u2018In The Near Future,\u2019 Reiterating Plan To Attach \u2018Criminal Justice Provisions\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"