Cannabis One Step Closer to Legal Banking

The Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act of 2019 passed the Democratic-held House with a two-thirds majority vote on September 25, 2019 and is on its way to the Republican-held Senate. The SAFE Banking Act will allow banks and other financial institutions to work with legal and registered US cannabis businesses, reducing the amount of cash used in cannabis transactions, and bringing the cannabis industry into a more transparent territory for financial regulation and taxation. Since cannabis is federally illegal, banking and financial institutions risk being fined by the US government if dealing with money generated from the sales of a controlled substance. In fact, the DEA can take down legal state cannabis operations under the fact that federal law supersedes state law. Accordingly, the cannabis industry and financial institutions have been actively lobbying for the enrollment of this bill, which may have a decision made by the end of the year.