Anxiety is running high in the cannabis industry as the Senate Banking Committee gets ready to discuss the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which seeks to normalize relations between state-licensed cannabis businesses and financial institutions.
Most everyone is acutely aware that without a solution to the lack of access to banking, the billion-dollar cannabis industry will continue to flounder in a state of stressful chaos, which operating in a cash-only system tends to produce.
What A Way To Treat A Billion-Dollar Industry: National Shunning
With cannabis legal in some form in nearly every state in the union, barely 10 percent of all banks and some 4% of all credit unions provide services to cannabis-related companies.
The national shunning of this huge industry is due to the absurdity of the Controlled Substances Act that has cannabis classified as a Schedule I drug. Therefore, any banking institution that would dare to touch the industry’s money would be deemed a money launderer by federal law.
So, classified as outlaws, is it any wonder that some players of the industry continue to behave that way. Keeping the doors closed to banking and financial institutions is keeping the doors open to …