{"id":5646,"date":"2016-03-04T06:32:13","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T06:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marijuana.com\/?p=47501"},"modified":"2016-03-04T06:32:13","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T06:32:13","slug":"senate-could-vote-to-allow-marijuana-banking-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/senate-could-vote-to-allow-marijuana-banking-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Could Vote to Allow Marijuana Banking This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/senate-could-vote-to-allow-marijuana-banking-this-week\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>The U.S. Senate could soon vote to\u00a0finally allow banks to do business with marijuana providers without fear of criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>Due to current federal\u00a0money laundering and drug laws, most financial services providers\u00a0are reluctant to take on cannabis\u00a0businesses as clients, even those that\u00a0operate legally under state law. As a result, many\u00a0marijuana dispensaries are forced to operate on a cash-only basis, making them targets for robberies.<\/p>\n<p>But an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/amendment\/114th-congress\/senate-amendment\/3393\">amendment<\/a>\u00a0introduced Wednesday by Democratic Sen.\u00a0Jeff Merkley of Oregon could change that.\u00a0He and\u00a0a bipartisan group of six co-sponsors are pushing\u00a0to attach the proposal to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/114th-congress\/senate-bill\/524\">broader bill<\/a> aimed at bolstering addiction recovery services that the Senate is considering this week.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, the amendment would prevent federal officials from\u00a0punishing banks that work\u00a0with the marijuana industry through prosecutions, asset seizures or termination of their FDIC insurance, which are very real threats under current law.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5\">Signing on with Merkley are Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sens. Elizabeth Warren\u00a0of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Michael Bennet of Colorado\u00a0and Patty Murray of Washington, all Democrats.\u00a0<\/span>Sen.\u00a0Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, is also on board.<\/p>\n<p>The text of the amendment is similar to standalone bills in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marijuana.com\/blog\/news\/2015\/04\/congress-considers-banking-access-for-marijuana-businesses\/\">House<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marijuana.com\/blog\/news\/2015\/07\/senate-bill-would-let-marijuana-businesses-access-banks\/\">Senate<\/a> that would ease banking access for marijuana businesses. The standalone Senate proposal is co-sponsored by the same group signed on to the new amendment, along with four others including independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and two other Republicans. The House legislation currently has 33 co-sponsors.<\/p>\n<p>Last July, the Senate Appropriations Committee\u00a0approved by a vote of 16-14 an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.appropriations.senate.gov\/imo\/media\/doc\/FY2016%20FSGG%20Appropriations%20-%20Merkley%20Marijuana%20Banking%20Amendment.pdf\">amendment<\/a> to the Department of the Treasury\u2019s spending bill that would have prohibited the department\u00a0from punishing financial institutions that work with marijuana businesses. The language did not make it into the final Fiscal Year 2016 omnibus spending bill signed into law by the president, however.\u00a0In July 2014, the House of Representatives <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/07\/16\/house-marijuana-banking_n_5592620.html\">voted<\/a> 231-192 for a similar amendment, but that too was excluded from\u00a0that year&#8217;s final spending package.<\/p>\n<p>It is unclear whether the new amendment will be brought forward to a vote on the Senate floor under the body&#8217;s arcane rules for germaneness, and will likely come down to whether Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky chooses to give it floor time over other amendments that have been submitted. As of Thursday, there were 91 pending amendments to the bill.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014, the Obama administration released\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fincen.gov\/statutes_regs\/guidance\/pdf\/FIN-2014-G001.pdf\">guidance<\/a> intended to make it easier for banks to do business with cannabis sellers, but many financial industry leaders have remained wary. They say that until federal law actually changes \u2014 as opposed to relying on nonbinding memos that could be changed by this or future administrations \u2014 they\u2019re largely going to stay away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. Senate could soon vote to\u00a0finally allow banks to do business with marijuana providers without fear of criminal prosecution. Due to current federal\u00a0money laundering and drug laws, most financial services providers\u00a0are reluctant to take on cannabis\u00a0businesses as clients, even those that\u00a0operate legally under state law. As a result, many\u00a0marijuana dispensaries are forced to operate [&#8230;] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5062,2417,9,1,3],"tags":[5063,2419],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}