EDITOR’S NOTE: On April 13, NJ Cannabis Insider hosts a virtual networking event, featuring professionals in the legal cannabis industries. Tickets are limited.
Legislation allowing banks to offer credit cards and checking accounts to legal marijuana businesses was reintroduced Thursday in the U.S. House, which passed the bill in the last Congress only to see it fail in the Senate.
The Secure and Fair Enforcement, or SAFE, Banking Act was the first piece of pro-cannabis legislation ever to reach the House floor and passed on a bipartisan vote in September 2019. Though the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on the issue, the bill never reached the floor for a vote in that chamber.
The measure also was included in two House-passed stimulus bills, known as the HEROES Act, which also failed to get a vote in the Senate.
This year, however, Democrats control the Senate, increasing the chances of cannabis legislation getting through Congress at a time when more states, including New Jersey, have legalized the drug for medical or recreational use.
Because marijuana is illegal on the federal level, federally-regulated financial institutions have shied away from building banking relationships with cannabis operations or even businesses that provide services to them.
That has forced employers to pay their workers in cash, making them targets for robbery, according to bill supporters.
“Thousands of employees and businesses across this country have been forced to deal in piles of cash for far too long, and it is the responsibility of Congress to step up and take action to align federal and state laws for the safety of our constituents and communities,” said the bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.
“In many states, the industry was deemed essential yet forced to continue to operate in all cash, adding a significant public health risk for businesses and their workers.”
Two New Jersey lawmakers are co-sponsors, Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-9th Dist., and Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-12th Dist.
Chanda Macias, first vice chair of the National Cannabis Roundtable, whose honorary chairs are former House Speaker John Boehner and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, called the bill “a win, win, win, for providers and their communities”
“It will create more jobs, more opportunity and more public safety,” Macias said.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., plans to reintroduce similar legislation in the Senate. U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez is a co-sponsor of that bill.
Menendez has introduced separate legislation allowing legal cannabis operations to buy insurance just like any other business.
NJ Cannabis Insider is a weekly subscriber-based trade journal and events group produced by NJ Advance Media, which also publishes NJ.com, The Star-Ledger and other affiliated papers. For more information, email staff here.
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him at @JDSalant.
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There’s a new effort to allow legal cannabis businesses to take credit cards and write checks - NJ.com
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