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Cannabis groups pleased with SAFE Banking hearing as senators push for expungement
Cannabis industry groups were heartened Thursday to hear bipartisan support from members of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee for marijuana banking reform – particularly, passage of the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act.
The Democratic-controlled banking panel convened the hearing about the challenges that a largely cash-based industry poses to small businesses and employees.
If lawmakers were to approve the SAFE Banking legislation, federal banking regulators would be prohibited from punishing financial institutions that offer basic banking services to marijuana businesses following state law.
While the outlook for passage appears better than in previous years, industry officials and congressional watchers say that approval is far from assured.
“The hearing showcased thoughtful discussion from members on both sides of the aisle, with a consensus among witnesses that the bill could go further to be most impactful, which should include providing broader access to financial services during committee markup,” Saphira Galoob, executive director of advocacy group National Cannabis Roundtable, said in a statement.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said at the hearing that SAFE Banking is “long overdue” but that she is also working on the descheduling of marijuana.
“If people can still get busted for purchasing marijuana, many banks will find it too risky to serve legal cannabis businesses, no matter whether we tell them it is technically OK,” she added.
Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana who reintroduced the legislation last month with Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, emphasized the safety risks of cash transactions in marijuana businesses, which are vulnerable to burglaries.
“To enter the banking system will help law enforcement more easily distinguish legitimate actors and focus more of their resources on prosecuting the illicit market.”
Support for SAFE
At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with two Democratic colleagues, endorsed adding marijuana expungement legislation to the SAFE Banking measure.
“We were encouraged to see the SAFE Banking Act reintroduced last week after Senator Daines and Senator Merkley worked to make key improvements to the legislation,” Schumer said in a statement along with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker.
“We look forward to watching this legislation progress through the Banking Committee and working with bipartisan partners to include additional improvements, such as the Harnessing by Pursuing Expungement (HOPE) Act, which would support states that want to expunge cannabis record with grants.”
Witnesses Merkley and Daines were joined by:
- Ademola Oyefeso, international vice president and director of the legislative and political action department at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).
- Michelle Sullivan, chief risk and compliance officer at Dama Financial.
- Kevin Sabet, president, CEO and fellow at Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
- Cat Packer, the vice chair at the Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition.
During the worker- and small business-focused hearing, Packer and Oyefeso shared with the committee how barriers to banking and financial services harm cannabis employees and efforts to create equitable business opportunities.
Workers who are paid in cash are vulnerable to theft, Oyefeso said, and some employees aren’t able to show adequate proof of employment to qualify for mortgages or leases. Others can’t secure loans, he said.
Giving cannabis workers better banking services would give them better financial stability, he said.
“Cannabis workers do not deserve to be treated as criminals,” Oyefeso said, “and should not have to struggle with financial and legal ambiguity on the job.”
Packer urged Congress to push for more comprehensive reform beyond banking, which she said was the only way to adequately address the harms of federal prohibition.
She added that the SAFE Banking Act could be more equitable if it included language ensuring that previous marijuana convictions wouldn’t be “red flags” used to reject loan applicants or those seeking access to financial services.
“It’s true that small businesses and workers can’t afford to be shut out of banking,” Packer said.
“But it’s also true that they can’t afford for disparities in traditional banking to become the new norm for cannabis banking.”
Arguments against SAFE
Kevin Sabet of Smart Approaches to Marijuana chastised the committee for hearing the issue at all, arguing that there are more pressing issues, such as opioids and teen mental health, that the senators should be dealing with.
Sabet testified that SAFE would ultimately hurt Americans by helping the industry, which he said is creating dangerous products.
“This bill would open up the marijuana industry to Wall Street hedge fund managers and Silicon Valley investors who will create even more hazardous products to get them into the hands of even more Americans,” he said.
Charlie Bachtell, the founder and chief executive officer of Chicago-based Cresco Labs, attended the hearing and lamented that operators weren’t among the witnesses.
In an interview with MJBizDaily, he urged industry members to contact their local representatives and legislators and advocate for banking reform.
But Bachtell said it was still important to note that the Senate was finally hearing the measure after it had already passed through the House of Representatives seven times in recent years.
“I think today’s testimony,” he added, “especially by Cat Packer, making the point of access to capital is really the significant roadblock to achieving public safety, and a more diverse and inclusive industry is an important part we’d like to see included as they think about how to get it to its final form.”
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/cannabis-groups-pleased-with-safe-banking-hearing-in-senate/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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