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The Republican senator who heads up the Banking Committee says the fact that marijuana remains illegal at the federal level while more states legalize it has created a \u201cquandary\u201d for cannabis businesses and banks that wish to serve them.<\/p>\n
\u201cCongress is going to have to make it legal, because today even though the president has declassified it or reduced its impact, the truth is it is still illegal,\u201d Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, said on Tuesday, referring to the Trump administration\u2019s recent move to federally reschedule marijuana<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore the banking system cannot allow access to our federal banking system. You can on the state level\u2014but on the federal level, until it becomes a legal conversation, until that\u2019s solved,\u201d you can\u2019t, the senator said.<\/p>\n Scott said he does think the issue will get solved, pointing to legislation called the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act that would provide federal protections to banks that work with state-legal cannabis businesses. Versions of that legislation have been passed by the House of Representatives several times but have never received a vote on the Senate floor.<\/p>\n The bill would \u201callow for the banking question to be solved by making it legal to bank it,\u201d Scott said. \u201cWhat you don\u2019t want is to have a situation where you have these cash rooms where you have hundreds of thousands of dollars cash sitting in a location. Everyone knows you can\u2019t bank it and therefore the criminal activity is much higher in these places.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite articulating the main argument for the reform in his new comments at the Milken Institute\u2019s Global Conference,\u00a0Scott has opposed cannabis banking legislation in the past<\/a>\u2014including when it advanced through the panel he now chairs under prior Democratic control in 2023.<\/p>\n The SAFER Banking Act has not yet been refiled in either chamber during the current 119th Congress, which began in January 2025.<\/p>\n Scott also spoke on Tuesday about how he\u2019s \u201cnot agnostic\u201d on the broader cannabis issue, saying he\u2019s \u201cgot a strong opinion\u201d and raising concerns about what he called the \u201csynthetic nature of marijuana and how it\u2019s 300 percent stronger than it was naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a different conversation,\u201d he said. \u201cThe real conservations we\u2019re having though is about about access to the banking system.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a quandary that we have to solve,\u201d the senator said. \u201cI think we\u2019ll get to a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Scott, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, previously served in the House, where he voted against an amendment to protect state medical cannabis programs from federal interference<\/a>.<\/p>\n At an American Bankers Association (ABA) Washington Summit in 2023, Scott said that the federal-state marijuana banking conflict will \u201ccome to a conclusion likely in this Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n He stressed the importance of\u00a0addressing the SAFE Banking Act during regular order<\/a>, calling it \u201can important decision, as opposed to rushing it to the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are Republicans who\u2019ve come out very positively on behalf of the SAFE Act. I\u2019m not one of those Republicans, but there is a bipartisan coalition who wants to have a serious conversation about the challenges that it would solve,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cAnd the question is: does that legislation actually solve more challenges than it creates harm?\u201d<\/p>\n Scott also said that lawmakers need to take on the broader debate about federal marijuana legalization, which is \u201csomething that we\u2019re going to have to wrestle with as a nation and as a Congress and get to an answer there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut there is a bipartisan coalition who wants to have that conversation, so I think that\u2019s good news,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth sides want to go through regular order\u2014that\u2019s better news. I think we\u2019ll come to a conclusion likely in this Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Marijuana Industry Banking Access Is A \u2018Quandary\u2019 That Needs To Be Solved With Legalization, Key GOP Senator Says<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Republican senator who heads up the Banking Committee says the fact that marijuana remains illegal at the federal level while more states legalize it has created a \u201cquandary\u201d for cannabis businesses and banks that wish to serve them. \u201cCongress is going to have to make it legal, because todayContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":459,"featured_media":85969,"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\/85968"}],"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\/459"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85970,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85968\/revisions\/85970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Marijuana Industry Banking Access Is A \u2018Quandary\u2019 That Needs To Be Solved With Legalization, Key GOP Senator Says<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"