(This creating story was up to date at 9:01 p.m. ET Monday.)
The nation’s largest marijuana {industry} voices begrudgingly acknowledged on Monday what Capitol Hill insiders believed for weeks was inevitable: Joe Biden’s first two years in workplace will finish with out federal marijuana banking reform.
The {industry} reached that conclusion after studying a must-pass omnibus spending bundle wouldn’t embrace the SAFE Banking Act – the bipartisan-supported measure banning federal regulators from punishing monetary establishments that present accounts to state-legal marijuana companies.
A well-placed supply and stakeholders confirmed to MJBizDaily late Monday the omission of the SAFE laws, which handed the Home of Representatives seven occasions, most not too long ago in July.
The event was first reported by Marijuana Second.
Many Capitol Hill lobbyists and cannabis-industry boosters insisted the passage of SAFE was imminent, however with out assured help from a minimum of 60 senators – the edge to beat Senate guidelines – the measure by no means went by way of the everyday committee listening to course of within the Senate.
Additionally, Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer didn’t name SAFE Banking to a vote.
Trulieve assertion on #SAFEBanking@Trulieve @rivers_kim $TRUL $TCNNF pic.twitter.com/oGA1fMWCPH
— Trulieve_IR (@Trulieve_IR) December 19, 2022
“Our small companies, legislation enforcement, and communities deserve higher,” stated Montana Sen. Steve Daines, one of many invoice’s eight Republican co-sponsors.
The SAFE Banking Act “would have been properly positioned to cross” the Senate if each events may have marked up the invoice in committee, Daines stated in an announcement.
Though Democratic Sen. Corey Booker threatened in the summertime of 2021 to withdraw his help of business-first measures comparable to SAFE Banking that don’t have social justice parts, no compromise language – comparable to packaging banking reform with criminal-record expungements and even clarified gun-possession rights for medical hashish sufferers – ever appeared within the Senate.
Earlier this month, Schumer and different prime Senate Democrats believed they’d hatched a deal to incorporate such a so-called “SAFE Plus” bundle into the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act, the annual protection spending invoice.
However that deal unraveled after a Republican revolt led by Sen. Chuck Grassley and Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell.
Grassley’s workplace launched a memo during which the Justice Division reported enforcement issues if SAFE Banking handed.
And McConnell stated that his caucus was against tucking the measure into an unrelated invoice.
The Senate may nonetheless technically carry out some unprecedented, sudden and unclear last-minute acrobatics to get SAFE handed on this lame-duck Congress.
However with time operating out and no deal in place, the hashish {industry} admitted defeat Monday.
The obvious demise of SAFE comes at a time when capital markets have dried up and each gross sales and wholesale costs are dropping quick in legacy states together with Colorado and California – the place lax enforcement additionally permits rampant illicit-market competitors to flourish, choking out authentic companies.
‘Win for the unlawful market’
Congress’ “failure” to cross SAFE Banking will trigger the complete {industry} to “endure,” whilst new markets come on-line and adult-use legalization spreads to pink states together with Missouri and presumably Oklahoma in addition to presidential bellwethers comparable to Ohio and Pennsylvania, Boris Jordan, co-founder and government chair of multistate operator Curaleaf Holdings stated in a statement Monday.
“The whole {industry} will endure because of this failure,” he stated.
“That is, sadly, a win for the unlawful market, which pays no taxes and has no laws or testing safeties in place.”
We would have liked bipartisan help for #SAFEbanking to cross, and once more, we had been shut, nevertheless it nonetheless wasn’t sufficient. We’re disenchanted however we’ll proceed combating for a safer, cash-free hashish {industry}. $CURA $CURLF pic.twitter.com/jYGxbWxZ7D
— Boris Jordan (@Boris_Jordan) December 19, 2022
SAFE Banking’s final failure is a bitter disappointment for the hashish {industry}, coming after:
- Repeated passage of the measure within the Home.
- Insistence from Senate Democrats and from Schumer that marijuana reform normally and SAFE specifically was a precedence.
- Biden indicated that his White Home can be pleasant to some marijuana reform.
Biden in October signed off on the first official review of marijuana’s federal classification since Richard Nixon and earlier this month signed into law a invoice that may enable for extra hashish analysis.
‘Missed alternative’
However {industry} gamers on Monday signaled their dissatisfaction with the president and Senate Democrats comparable to Schumer whilst they repeated a well-known line: Actual progress is simply across the nook.
“In failing to enact the SAFE Banking Act, the Senate missed a possibility to cross one of many uncommon items of laws that has the help of each Republicans and Democrats, together with the vast majority of the American folks,” Khadijah Tribble, the CEO of the U.S. Hashish Council (USCC) and a senior vp at Curaleaf, stated in an announcement.
“To say that we’re disenchanted is an understatement,” she added.
“However to imagine the Senate’s inertia round hashish banking reform dooms the complete hashish {industry} reductions the entire headway we made this yr.
“From the Biden administration saying that it’s going to conduct an official regulatory assessment of whether or not hashish needs to be criminalized in any respect to the primary standalone cannabis-related invoice being signed into legislation to fund essential analysis – 2022 will nonetheless mark the turning level in our struggle to legalize hashish.
“The USCC and our companions have constructed a motion to finish hashish prohibition that may proceed in 2023, and I’ve little question we’ll finally win.”
Chris Roberts will be reached at chris.roberts@mjbizdaily.com.
