A big problem facing nearly all marijuana businesses in states where medicinal or recreational use is legal remains getting a bank account. Because federal law still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I dangerous (and illegal) drug, more than 97% of federally regulated banks have denied banking services to marijuana-related businesses. In nearly every instance, pot is still a cash business.

Last Wednesday, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and nine other U.S. Senators, including Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, sent a letter to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s acting director, Jamal El-Hindi, urging the regulator to issue further guidance to financial institutions on providing services specifically to businesses that “do nothing more than provide services to the state-sanctioned marijuana industry.”

The impact affects even those businesses that have an indirect relationship to legal marijuana. The letter notes:

Most banks and credit unions have either closed accounts or simply refused to offer services to indirect and ancillary businesses that service the marijuana industry. A large number of professionals have been unable to access the financial system because they are doing business with marijuana growers and dispensaries. This long list of professionals includes chemists who have had their checking accounts closed due to their role in testing marijuana for the presence of harmful materials like arsenic; the security industry, which marijuana businesses heavily rely on due to the massive amounts of cash they handle; and lawyers offering legal services to marijuana businesses, who have reported banks denying applications for bank accounts and credit cards.

The Senators also warn that the banking restrictions are “an invitation to tax fraud, robberies, money laundering, and organized crime.”

Even if the regulators make these changes, there is no guarantee that they would not be reversed under a new presidential administration.

‘Marijuana’ or ‘Marihuana’? It’s All Weed to the DEA
The Drug Enforcement Administration published a rule in the Federal Register Wednesday clarifying that certain marijuana extracts — notably cannabidiol, or CBD — are indeed Schedule 1 controlled substances and just as illegal under federal law as whole-plant marijuana itself.

DEA spokesman Russell Baer says it is an administrative measure to help with record-keeping, but the rule drew attention for its use of the archaic spelling of “marihuana” — with an “H” instead of a “J.” The rule is entitled “Establishment of a New Code for Marihuana Extract,” and uses the H spelling throughout.

Some marijuana legalization advocates speculated that this spelling was used to be sneaky, “so the article wouldn’t pop up under any searches for changes in marijuana policy.” Others asked “when the DEA will step into the 21st century and stop using the archaic version of the word ‘marihuana.'”

The spelling is freighted with historical significance. Traditionally, the plant and the drugs derived from it had been called “cannabis,” the scientific word for the genus of the plant itself. “‘Cannabis’ is the botanical term for the plant, and the term for the drug in most of the world,” explained drug policy expert Mark Kleiman of NYU in an email.

Read more at The Washington Post.

This Will Be the Next Marijuana Capital of the World
This year marked a turning point for marijuana, both as a cultural movement and as an industry. Polls show a record percentage of Americans now favor legalization, and most of us already live in a state with some form of legal cannabis. California, home to more than a tenth of the U.S. population and the sixth largest economy in the world, just approved recreational marijuana. In 2017, expect the momentum to grow with further mainstreaming of cannabis and the cementing of the industry.

Los Angeles will emerge as the marijuana capital of the world. The financial industry has Wall Street, the tech industry has Silicon Valley, and the cannabis industry will soon have Los Angeles. No disrespect to Denver, but Los Angeles is about to come out of the shadows and steal the spotlight.

By some estimates Los Angeles’s medical cannabis market is already worth close to $1 billion, larger than Colorado’s entire recreational market. Unfortunately, most of that business operates in the shadows today. But that is about to change.
Read more at CNBC.

Hundreds of Patients Apply for Medical Marijuana After Court Ruling
Local medical marijuana providers and patients are celebrating a judge’s decision to reopen dispensaries after voters in November passed an initiative restarting the statewide program.

“We’re all pretty ecstatic,” said Bob Devine, owner of Spark1 in Bozeman. “In the end, the patients win out.”

On Dec. 7, District Judge James Reynolds of Helena ruled that ballot initiative 182, approved last month by voters 58 to 42 percent, should take effect immediately.

“The folks that are maybe the most in need are the least able to provide, to grow their own,” Reynolds was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “I think speed is more important than niceties.”

The initiative overrides a law passed by the Montana Legislature, which went into effect in August, limiting providers to three patients each. The law led to the closure of several dispensaries in Gallatin, Park and Madison counties — an area that accounts for a quarter of the state’s medical marijuana patients — and left thousands of registered users without providers.

Read more at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

The Marijuana Industry Needs to Stand Up to Jeff Sessions
On Election Day, California voted to become the world’s largest legal marijuana market, and seven more states also voted yes on recreational or medical pot. Initially, President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise win didn’t seem to pose an immediate threat to the legal pot industry; Trump isn’t popular in the cannabis world, but he’s not seen as a committed prohibitionist either. At a post-election industry conference in Vegas, the largest controversy involved a nearly naked model covered in cold cuts.

That outlook changed after Trump picked Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican, as his nominee for attorney general. While many conservatives have relaxed their views on both marijuana and criminal penalties for drug offenses, Sessions evidently has not. “We need grown-ups in charge in Washington saying marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized,” he said at a hearing in April. “It is in fact a very real danger.”

To liberals, the Sessions nomination is, as The New York Times editorialized, “an insult to justice.” Sessions had been rejected for a federal judgeship in 1986 due to concerns that he’s a racist. His nomination in 2016 to the far more powerful position of attorney general raised an immediate outcry from, among others, those concerned with treatment of undocumented immigrants, the rights of LGBTQ and Muslim Americans, and supporters of criminal justice reform and police accountability.

The legal marijuana industry, which is anticipated to top $6 billion in sales this year, also has reason to fear Sessions, but its response has been much more muted. The National Cannabis Industry Association, the industry’s largest lobby, released a statement saying that it looked forward to working with Attorney General Sessions. They think it’s safer to weather his tenure at the Justice Department than to fight it.

Read more at Slate.

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